


Chaotic Howling

by WizzKiz



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bizarre yet perfect mix of movies comics and mythology, Eventual OCxMC pairing, F/M, Gen, Magic, Self-Discovery, Shapeshifting, Slow-burn-possibly-unrequited-they're-killin'-me-pairing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 105,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WizzKiz/pseuds/WizzKiz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Earth was a popular planet in the Nine Realms once, before Odin forbade all visitations. But magic always leaves it mark and something has been waiting a millennium for its return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shields and Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> This has become a fleshed out fic, complete with timeline and copious scribblings that somehow turned into something novel-length. This first chapter is more of a prologue, a taster, which is why it is so short. So, please, enjoy; I hope you have as much fun reading it as I do writing it - and please let me know if you do!
> 
> Takes place just after the first Avengers movie and whilst having an 'ending', there are already many extra chapters and one-shots, and will be for as long as the films keep getting produced (which is hopefully for a long time)!

 

> _“We are all books containing thousands of pages and within each of them lies an irreparable truth.”_
> 
> _-_ The Animus

 

Aerla couldn’t help but smile at the balding man who watched her with his usual steady expression. She still hadn’t seen him lose his cool, and as someone with a low boiling point that liked to share, she considered that quite an accolade.

It wasn’t that she was an angry person per se; her emotions just ran a little higher than normal. Okay, perhaps she did have a well of untapped anger, but she hadn’t lived a thousand years and not practiced control. 

Aerla had waited her entire life for a whisper of movement from the stars, and honestly, she was shaking with anticipation. Centuries of waiting on tenterhooks tended to do that to a person, a wait that had begun when she had stumbled into a field of broken heather.

The creature that now shared her eyes was remarkably long-lived, and it could sense a turning point approaching. Aerla fidgeted as fur pushed under her skin, the desire to shift riding her hard. Living without fresh air for the last week had that effect, even if she was in a hotel-with-wings.

Why was she torturing herself inside an amazingly decorated plane that knew far too much about her? Because she needed what it contained to get aboard the _next_ insanely decorated plane that would soon know too much about her.

It wasn’t her fault that SHIELD kept its base of operations on a flying spit of land that rarely touched the ground, but she would be damned if its occupants got away from her again.

_For a third time_ , she specified with an accustomed bitterness.

At least one of those times was due to her homebody nature; she had been reluctant to leave her sprawling home on a whim. But the other time? That was because of tricksy gods and a group of humans that worked too quickly.

She had tried to get to America before the former had left, had almost gotten herself killed in her desperation. If she hadn’t been so uneasy at the recent discovery of flying suits and affectionately termed ‘mutants’, she might have seen the signs and been prepared.

So maybe that was her fault too. But SHIELD had to share some of the blame by covering up the rumours of an impossibly heavy hammer- and really, who sends a mythological artefact to New Mexico?- as they kept the whole alien thing under wraps.

Not that she hadn’t wondered, but a thousand years of false starts and dead ends managed to wear down a girl’s faith. Instead, she had waited until she was certain, panic skittering under her skin when the first news bulletins had reached Britain and gods graced New York’s skyline.

But then some fuckers had teamed up and banished the one thing she had waited a damned millennium for. She was sure the stars had laughed as she shrieked her agony at them; upon finding that her prey had disappeared beyond her reach.

She would not make the same mistake again.

That was why she had hunted SHIELD down and was now cooling her heels in their second-most hidden base; waiting for the all-clear from the man who had given her more information in a week, than she had gathered in her entire life.

It was almost humbling.

“You know I could just recommend you?” Phil Coulson’s voice was friendly, as it always was.

She waved her hand dismissively at him. “And risk your reputation? Don’t worry about it; just point me in the right direction.”

He had already given her so much; she refused to forsake his kindness by demanding more, even if it would make her life easier. But when had life ever been easy? It had been long, yes, but never easy.

Phil, who smelled of starlight and bitter energy, had led her straight to the organisation she sought. Aerla believed that Lady Luck was a dubious mistress, but she had sent the SHIELD agent directly in her path as Phil tracked a hacker around New York. For all of his technology, both Earthly and not, he had been stalked by a hunter with a wolf’s nose.

Phil inclined his head in deliberation. “Your transport is ready.” His eyes travelled over her, something flickering in their depths before darkening. “You know Fury will want your secrets.”

She sighed heavily. The agent wasn’t wrong. His director would not be happy when she appeared in his domain, and she did not doubt that her trespass would be accompanied by a lot of pain, unfortunately hers. Aerla could only hope that her offer would eventually appease the man.

If Nick Fury needed to rough her up and analyse her blood to assure himself that she would be an asset to his team, she had merely accomplished the next leg of her journey. In her defence, she hadn't spent the last few days with Phil for nothing. If she could remain insignificant around his needle-wielding crew, she could grit her teeth through everything else.

She had survived worse.

“He can try.”

Phil merely blinked at her for a moment. “Why did you come to me?”

“You’re the most approachable.” She flashed her teeth wryly and added, “And the least likely to kill me.”

“Because I don’t have super powers?”

She took a moment to eye the countless weapons along his office wall and wrinkle her nose at the lingering smell of alien technology. “Hardly. No, I chose you because you have a heart, and I cannot say the same for your superiors.” _Because I latched onto you like a lost pup in a storm, and you gave me everything I wanted,_ she amended silently.

Phil spoke through her thoughts, “Then why don’t you stay?”

Aerla tilted her head at him, trying vainly to hide the fond smile that rose to her lips. He had been nice to her, nicer than he had to be to a woman that appeared in his office with naught but secret knowledge and another form to her name. Admittedly, with hindsight, it had been a stupid idea to approach him so; but she hadn’t tailed the man for a day and not expected to come nose-to-nose with a gun before she could open her mouth.

But Phil was friendly, too friendly - he couldn't shoot her on sight alone. He hadn’t suffered enough betrayal to sour his pronoia, and she hoped that he never did. He fit here, amongst his wannabe agents and space tech, but she had higher aspirations and a god to track down.

“You do know that Tony Stark is on that helicarrier, right?” She said, and thought she heard him mutter something derogatory under his breath as she continued, “And a Norse deity? It’s like the Poetic Edda come to life.”

Superficiality coated her words, because he knew the real reasons.

Her lupine heart had trusted the man, despite the metal barrel aimed at it. She had told him nearly everything, fearing that he would not understand unless he saw her reality. So, overcoming a lifetime of conditioned training, she had showed him her other half.

He had said that nothing surprised him anymore, but his finger had twitched on the trigger when she split-second shifted back onto two legs and grinned with the hysteria more reminiscent of a hyena than a wolf.

It was worth opening old wounds to make him listen, even if she hated the look of pity in his eyes when she had danced over her life’s story. He saw a damaged damsel with a bruised past and so he had told her everything. Now she would enter the lion’s den armed with knowledge.

“The Poetic Edda?” He had the nerve to raise an eyebrow. “Are you nerding over a piece of literature?”

Aerla scoffed. “Better a fantastic myth that holds all the answers to my questions, than trading cards.”

Something strange twitched over his features before he said drily, “They’re collector’s items, not for trading.”

She arched one scornful brow and drawled, “Exactly.”

Aerla considered the look that had crossed his face; he was controlled enough that it should have been invisible, but she had not spent a collective century with wolves and failed to master their tiny tics. She decided that it was one of his quirks that she would never understand, like his ability to welcome a stranger into his fold of scientists and mismatched agents, or the way he pored over files stamped with an ‘A’.

He seemed to wrestle with a problem as she watched him, but his hands finally steepled. “He will ask me about you.”

She let her shoulders lift and fall at the mention of Fury. “Put him off, you’re good at that.” A grin tugged at her cheek; she didn’t know how Phil managed to stand up to the scary son of a bitch director, but he did, and he got away with it too.

However, he didn’t match her smile; in fact she could almost feel his brain working. Phil was very good at keeping his emotions under wraps, but occasionally she got a feeling or two.

He had never been this serious. “What is it?”

“There’s a reason Fury is so easy on me.”

Aerla frowned and restrained a shudder. That was Fury being easy? She might not have seen much of the man, but what she had seen had her instincts telling her to hide. There was an aura about the director that set her hackles up, and she was about to come face-to-face with him.

Her sanity was clearly in dire need of a check; the answers that she had searched for were within claws reach and still she was perturbed by a mere mortal. But her land had screamed in recognition so she knew the answers were nearing, and she would chase them to the ends of the universe.

Literally.

Phil inhaled slowly as if he was still thinking. “I’ll distract him for a week, but once that deadline is up, he’ll know everything. I can't hide you within his own mainframe.”

Phil acted as if he was doing her a disservice, but she had expected less. With his aid she had a whole seven days to prove her worth to Fury before her past got out. If she was lucky, she would already be on the proverbial payroll. If she wasn’t, she would have a heck of a lot of angry eye patch at her back.

She just needed to wait for the stars to align again.

“But,” his voice was low and Aerla sighed inwardly, there was always a ‘but’. “There’s something that I need you to do; because when Fury finds out about this, I won’t be able to help you.”

A whisper of pain and sorrow filtered into her awareness as he continued with none of it on his face. “You mustn’t tell any of them that you’ve seen me.”

Aerla frowned, confusion battling the whispers. “The Avengers? Why?”

A sad smile ghosted on Phil’s lips. “Because I died.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this very short prologue, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons and abilities, are all mine.


	2. Tricks and Trades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The click of a barrel didn’t faze Aerla; she knew what she risked coming to this place, seeing these people. They would threaten to kill her until she had given them what they wanted, and if she didn’t they would try to kill her. Try, and fail, because she had faced far worse odds than one guard with a gun, and she had lived longer regardless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you hunt long enough for something, probability says that you'll find it. If you're looking for keys, you find keys; if you're looking for happiness, you find happiness; and if you're looking for bickering, self-obsessed, world-saving superheroes? They'll find you.

 

> “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
> 
> -       1 Peter 5:8

 

“Because I died.”

The words reverberated in Aerla’s head as she waited for her transport’s final rocking movements to fade. She had wondered why Phil didn't show her how Loki had escaped from SHIELD, why he shut down when she had voiced her doubts over the god's actions; but it made perfect sense now.

Aerla did not begrudge Phil his bitterness; she was never kind to the people that tried to kill her either. It hadn't surprised her when emotion had finally guttered onto his face, but Fury not telling anyone that their favourite agent was alive had succeeded in shocking her.

Aerla understood motivation, she knew how powerful a friend’s death could be – she had suffered enough of them before she closed herself off - but to cover it up in order to kick-start the remaining Avengers into action? That was wrong.

Phil had tried to explain it to her, but the words had sounded so robotic; as if he had been told them enough times that even he had started to believe them. It just didn’t sit right with her.

However, at least now she realised why she had found him where she did; where her nose had led her, to the last place the Tesseract was activated. She had soaked in the bitter energy for a week whilst ancient, familiar abandonment echoed through her veins. Aerla had finally come to terms that she had failed, so miserably, when a starlight-saturated Phil appeared with a similar look in his eyes.

He had been left behind too, not by gods, but by the Avengers and Fury. It explained why he had crumbled so easily when she had told him of her plight. Misery just loved company, and Phil was too nice.

It didn't escape Aerla’s notice that Phil was living vicariously through her. She half-thought that this might be his way of flipping Fury the bird, in that strait-laced, unflappable way of his. She had her own reasons for being here, but if she could aid the man who let her sift through hours of classified SHIELD information, she would happily ruffle Fury’s feathers.

She would keep Phil’s secret, which in turn meant that she was keeping Fury’s secret too. Although the latter did not sit right with her, – one should not keep truths from your allies – she would honour her promise to Phil, because loyalty was important.

Aerla stretched out until her back pushed against metal casings and once again thanked Lady Luck for sending the supposedly deceased agent her way. Her human skin shivered with fear, but the creature that rode her mind was confident. It could sense something similar on the air, it was old, had not walked the corridors for a week or more, but it hummed in recognition. Magic.

She might not be able to smell the starlight that indicated the force foreign to this planet, but her wolf was very aware that something powerful had been here recently. Far too powerful to be so easily captured, even if the Avengers were as magnificent as they seemed. The facts just did not add up, but she knew better than anyone that gods worked in mysterious ways.

She also knew they were arrogant, beings who thought themselves superior usually were; she had faith that they would be back. It was all she had left to go on, now.

Her wolf twitched. _It was time._

Closing her jaws on the clever mechanism that kept her locked inside, she clamped down to hear a satisfying click. She was out of the box.

In a practiced movement that had long stopped needing proper thought, she pulled her wolf inside and _twisted_ her magic just so. Colour flooded her vision once more and she crouched on silent hands and feet.

Taking a moment to listen for any approaching footsteps, she considered herself in the reflective walls. Her blonde hair was pulled back into its customary French braid and her light blue eyes glittered with the joy of shifting. Plain leather decorated her taller than average form; black on her legs and feet, and more black in a band across her white cotton shirt. Her quiver hung comfortably on her back and the wooden bow that threaded it hovered above her shoulder.

Seeing the simple materials reminded her to grab the one thing she had that was more complicated than the 10th century could provide. She slipped the tiny bundle of electronics into one dark boot, not risking her mystery to a stray signal that might serve to alert.

Aerla might dress as if she had never left the time that she was born, but that did not mean she was unaware of modern technology, far from it. In fact she adored how far humans had come, and she had watched it all happen. Life would have been far harder to bear if electricity had not kept her entertained, even if it had also forced her to be more careful.

But magic was an old being, like the creature that lived within her, and it did not get on with new-fangled inventions even if she did.

The coast was clear and it was time to implement the plan she had spent a furious week preparing. Phil had said there would be an alarming amount of strangely dressed people aboard the helicarrier, but only one that carried a bow. The legendary archer would immediately pick her out of the crowd, as would any of the higher ranking agents. She would need to walk the paths less travelled to remain undetected for as long as possible.

SHIELD’s headquarters were arranged around the bridge, the hub of all activity and the place she needed to stay as far away from as possible. She didn’t know who she would bump into, or where, - and a Marauders map would be insanely useful right now – but it was a safe bet to assume that Fury and his minions would be in the flight deck.

Instead, she was searching for the control room, admittedly it also had a high risk factor for director encounters, but it would definitely contain the most important people on the ship. Phil had laughed when she first proposed her idea to him, and it was a rare enough occasion that she would forever remember it.

 _‘Foolhardy, brazen, but a high chance of success.’_ Aerla could live with that description, it wasn’t the methods she cared about, it was the results. If she had to throw her lot in with the Avengers to be in the front seat for a god’s return, call her an Avenger. Hell, it was not as if she was even opposed to defending this planet, more that it was no longer under threat.

Aerla did not deny that on the off-chance that something did attack Earth she would relish the chance to combat it. It was not just the enticing opportunity to fight with superheroes, but it had been an age since she had come up against a worthy foe. The thought had her wolf grinning with eagerness and she tamped down the urge to let it show on her face.

It was time to enter the lion’s den.

It took her far less time than she thought it would to find her location on the mental blueprint, and it was pretty shameful how easily she blended in with the crew that scurried about. Some of it was down to her aura of confidence, but the other was an organisation’s pure arrogance.

Yes, she may have sneaked aboard with the help of an insider, and this flying maze had more exterior sensors than she had nerve endings, but seriously? Humans had become far cockier than she had thought, or perhaps that just came with the territory of “Earth’s Greatest Defenders.”

And she had thought gods were conceited.

The sound of arguing brought her out of her mental sneer and made a smile tug at her lips; she had found them. Phil had said they never stopped bickering.

Three men occupied the computer-filled room; one busied himself in the corner with an air of chosen ignorance, whilst the other two stood almost nose-to-nose, one fair, one dark, both startlingly good looking.

The fair former had an air of leadership about him, one rightly earned if his accomplishments in World War II were anything to go by. Steve Rogers was a biological marvel, he had been a valiant man already, but it was Howard Stark who had created the muscled hero she saw before her.

The dark latter was proof that the creator did not just dabble in serums of a mutative kind.

Aerla strode in as if she had as much right to be there as they did; assurance an art she had perfected. Rogers caught sight of her first and collected himself to nod at her.

She mirrored the gesture because his solider nature demanded it, but didn’t appreciate the way the dark one perused her with an air of dissatisfaction.  

“Please," she taunted, "Don’t stop your lover’s tiff on my account.”

The quiet, bespectacled one looked up at last and Rogers changed from respectful to affronted, “Who are you, the female Hawkeye?”

Aerla managed to restrain a scowl. She had been wielding a bow for far longer than the Avenger’s archer. She must have hit a nerve if the man immediately resorted to name-calling, so she raised an eyebrow at his star-spangled uniform. “Who are you, the biggest Boy Scout in all of America?”

The dark one had crossed his arms but raised a hand to halt her. “Hey, don’t associate him with the rest of us.”

“Why, threatened, Glow?” She nodded at the circle of fascinating light in the centre of his chest. Rogers smiled, but Glow quirked his head at her, eyes narrowing slightly as if he could tell she knew exactly who he was. She did of course, she knew of each of them, and all courtesy of a man they thought was dead.

The quiet one decided to intercede after throwing a quelling look at the others. “Who are you?”

“She’s the female Hawkeye.”

Glow’s interruption earned him a frown, but he had dangerous humour on his face that dared Aerla to respond. “I said not to call me that.”

“No, you didn’t.”

She opened her mouth to reply but then realised he was right, _damn_. “Well, I implied it.”

Satisfaction was a tiny glint in his eyes as his hands fiddled with a piece of electronic equipment. “You also implied that you're the female Hawkeye. You're female. You carry his weapons.”

“Hey,” she reached back to stroke the familiar wood, “I brought this from home.”

Glow's face twitched with an almost hidden smirk but Rogers spoke up before they could continue. “Enough. Why are you here?”

She smiled. “I’m the newest member of this happy, little crew.”

“You are?”

“Oh, really?”

“We call ourselves the Avengers,” Glow called out.

“No, we don’t.”

“You call us that.”

She spoke over the other two men and eyed his moving fingers, “I had heard.”

He seemed to click something and his hand made a miniscule swishing movement. The quiet one looked from her to his screen and chuckled at whatever he had seen there. She bristled, “Hey, hey, what did you just say to him?”

Glow’s darkly handsome features turned from amusement to innocence as he twitched the device up into his sleeve. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Aerla glared and stalked past him to the other, who quickly flicked his fingers across his screen. It was blank when she got there. Scowling at him just made a small, but cheeky, smile appear on his face as he pushed his glasses up.

“Quiet one, indeed,” she murmured and his smile grew.

A flurry of movement from behind her signalled the arrival of a handful of armoured gunmen and that of a tall, black trenchcoat. She had been discovered.

He was fast.

“Where is she?”

Fury’s voice was at a normal volume but resounded with command as he looked at Rogers with one angry eye.

Anticipation made her whisper loudly, “I’m in his blind spot, aren’t I? 

The quiet one snorted whilst a grin finally appeared on Tony Stark’s face.

 

* * *

 

“What do you want to know?” Aerla gritted her teeth against the pain in her upper arms as restrictions kept her bound to a chair.

They had been far rougher with her than was warranted. She was deliberately unarmed, had even held her hands up for an easy cuffing, but they dragged her from the room nonetheless. Humiliation was an unfamiliar brand on her cheeks; it had been a while since she had been trussed up for the slaughter.

Fury, the director of SHIELD, the orchestrator of her binds, sat opposite, free from such restraints. Despite herself, she was fascinated by him, by an eye patch that covered one of the two calculating eyes that stared at her without mercy.

“Do you have many of those coats, or do you just never get them dirty?” The words slipped out, gratifyingly without presence of discomfort. His face didn’t change; but she supposed with Stark around the man had built up a tolerance of cheek.

The click of a barrel didn’t faze Aerla; she knew what she risked coming to this place, seeing these people. They would threaten to kill her until she had given them what they wanted, and if she didn’t they would try to kill her. Try, and fail, because she had faced far worse odds than one guard with a gun, and she had lived longer regardless.

Fury just watched silently so she tried to indicate her expectation with her hands, wincing when the blood moved back into her bound arms.

“So you do feel pain.” He was emotionless, commanding, like the leaders and generals of old.

She never had liked autocrats.

“Doesn’t everyone?” she said through her teeth and willed the pins and needles to die down.

“Around here, you can never know.”

Aerla grasped the opportunity, pain forgotten; keeping her voice low and suggestive to dangle secret knowledge for his curiosity, “But you know everything.”

He didn’t move, didn’t blink, but she felt the tiniest of sensations in the air: a grimace. Delight glimmered through her when he asked grudingly, “What do you know?”

Unfortunately, very little, but he didn’t need to know that. She bared her teeth in a savage smile. “I suggest a trade.”

 

* * *

 

All in all, she felt that she had started off pretty well. Fury had given her a whole ten minutes before her promised blood belonged to him like some sordid _"Merchant of Venice"_ exchange. Actually, she would rather give a meagre pound of flesh than what SHIELD’s scientists would put her through. In the meantime however, it was time to explore.

She left the tiny room that had been temporarily assigned to her, suspiciously sandwiched between guards’ barracks. The area was littered with more spying devices than she had fingers and toes; it was insulting.

“Please,” she muttered contemptuously and flicked one of the tiny microphones, hoping that the listener suffered a shock.

Aerla did not fool herself into thinking that she was accepted into the heart of the carrier, so she did not aim for the bridge. Instead, she meandered back to the control room as if she hadn’t just been roughed up by Fury’s goons.

The occupants had dwindled to two, and they both worked intently in the back. She felt their eyes on her as she chose a counter to perch on and pulled her phone from her boot, the volume just loud enough to ping against the walls.

Tony Stark, son of the inventor who had turned renewable energy on its head, possibly the richest womaniser on the planet, and the creator of the amazing Iron Man suit, finally looked up and tilted his head to the side. “So, he cleared you, did he?”

Her attention focused on her phone and she pressed on the screen. “Eventually.”

Stark’s eyes grazed her bare arms where the evidence of her time with Fury glared. The red marks were still sore, but she knew there would be no point in covering them; they all recognised that she was the outsider here.

Aerla would only reveal select information to Fury, but the Avengers had not treated her like a criminal. And if her sudden craving for human contact was any indication, she had spent far too much time with Phil after years of being alone.

Her fur settled contentedly under her skin in the presence of the two scientists, and surprisingly Stark didn’t mention her injuries. “So what exactly do you do?”

She paused her tapping to glance at him. “Right now or in general?”

As he shrugged she saw that his hands were empty for once, he seemed the type to be constantly fidgeting with things. _Side effects of an inventor’s brain_ , she supposed.

“Both.”

Aerla nibbled her lip and gave a decisive tap on the screen, her wolf wanted to be honest so she trusted the instinct. “Generally I stick below the radar, I’m neither strong enough to evade notice, or so well-connected that I have someone to bail me out. I cruise, help out where I can.”

She continued tapping and gave a small roll of her shoulders, aware that she still lacked the former, and the latter could not give her what she sought.

“You know, be the caped crusader.” _With the money to boot_ , she thought amusedly, even if her wealth wouldn’t help her here.

“Batman would never use a bow.”

Smirking at Stark’s astute truth, she continued, “In regards to right now, I’m wondering what you want.”

He kept watching, despite her attention not fully on him, “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we all have a thing here.” He gestured to encompass the ship. “There’s the patriot, we have a Viking, a Hulk, and I’m-“

“The boastful glow stick?”

He propped his chin in his hands when she didn’t look up. “I was going to go with the Iron Man, actually.”

She shrugged, hiding a wince when her arms protested. “Either works.”

Stark continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “You, however, do not appear to have a thing.”

“Oh, do you want my nickname? Do you dislike 'Glow'? I thought it suited you, you can be 'Boy Scout 2', if you really want.”

He nodded as if seriously thinking about it. “I’m flattered, but no, thank you. My point remains, you are an unknown.”

Aerla finally looked up and cocked her head with a bright grin. “And doesn’t that just bug you?”

The inventor’s lip twitched with what seemed to be a concealed grimace and then he turned on his heel to storm off to the opposite side of the room, muttering to the man lurking there.

She watched them surreptitiously; she knew who the other man was. Even Phil was wary around Dr. Bruce Banner, the man who transformed into a green behemoth that knew no compassion. It was typical of the arrogant billionaire to befriend _that_ doctor, of all people.

Shaking her head and giving a little laugh, she fidgeted to get comfortable and concentrated on her phone again, muttering, “Ah, stupid bucket heads.”

Two armed guards had appeared at the door; she had heard them coming but waited until a bout of furious tapping had accomplished her mission. They stood there, patiently, but they were drawing attention. Stark was still muttering to the doctor whilst his hands typed on one of his fascinating thin-air screens. He drew back with surprise and then looked at her from across the room.

Suddenly, Aerla held less hope that the scientists in the next room would be very nice to her. If she presumed that Stark had just seen what was going to happen, she was not in for a good time.

With a sigh, she hopped off of the table and gave a mock salute to the corner. Stark just stared, but Banner murmured, “Good luck.”

This was not going to be fun.

The guards marched within centimetres, their guns casually aimed at her back. How sweet, they might not kill her instantly, they would cripple her first. They herded her around corridors, presumably to try and confuse her, but she had studied the maps well - they were headed to the largest lab.

Aerla was not scared of Fury’s methods; he wanted to know what she was before he even considered keeping her on the ship. Whilst it seemed he wouldn’t torture information out of her, he would glean what he could from her blood work. His quest was futile and that was why she had so readily agreed to it; she was utterly confident that her body wouldn’t betray her.

The last door opened soundlessly and she was barraged with a different kind of technology, this one not as interesting. Medical machines plagued the room, the shiny metal contraptions did not hold the same allure to her as Stark’s had, these eked out malice.

Aerla heaved a sigh and brandished her arms to the nearest scientist. “Drain me,” she said with morbid humour, but only cold eyes stared back.

The pain started.

 

* * *

 

Once they were done with her it was as if she didn’t exist. They ignored her in favour of the stories her body might tell them. She cast about for anyone that might object to her departure but not an eye looked her way.

Aerla was affronted when there were not even any guards in the hallway; however someone did skulk beside the door. It was Banner. She was startled, but the doctor had more emotion on his face than the white-robed monsters behind her, so she indulged him.

“This is a nice surprise,” she said lightly, gritting her teeth and rolling her shoulders to try and loosen the tight muscles.

“Tony wanted to come...” Banner trailed off with one of his tiny smiles; it raised a similar one from her.

“I’m sure he did, but he’s far too busy analysing my results, like everyone else in that room,” she drawled, pain still crawling up and down her skin.

Banner tilted his head as if to say that she was correct. Aerla shrugged, she knew Stark would, he was like Fury in that way.

“He won’t find anything,” she confided nonchalantly, despite knowing how much listening tech littered the walls.

“Won’t he?” Banner gestured ahead to indicate that she could walk with him. He was being friendly and she thought she knew why.

“Nope.” She grinned at him, welcoming his distraction from her numerous injuries. “I’m human.”

“So am I,” he said, looking at her with such intelligent eyes; they had ended up at the control room again. She didn’t want to go in this time, needed to curl up in a corner and lick her wounds.

Aerla knew that she should be more careful around this one if she wanted to keep her secrets a little longer, but she liked the way the fire licked her fingers “Well then, we have something in common."

His face didn’t change but she knew his brain was whirring intently, so she forced another smile and rubbed her aching neck. “I’ll see you later.”

“Feel better.”

He was a sweetie.

No one else crossed her path.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and penchant for danger, are all mine.


	3. Birdseyes and Birthrights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There are rumours there’s another archer around. I gotta scatter 'em before Natasha says Fury’s bumping me off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reputation is a fluid thing, especially when it comes to wielding super powers where one flick of the wrist might destroy a skyscraper. Of course, Aerla is a pretty fluid thing, too, and she might have finally found a rock to bar her path - too bad she's used to forging her own.

 

> “The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.”
> 
> -       Aesop.

 

Aerla slept surprisingly soundly for someone whose life was in limbo; it helped that she needed to rest off the nervous energy. Her body was fresh and healed when she awoke, the aches and bruises from the day before a distant memory. Wisely, she kept her shirt sleeves long, there was no need to advertise her regenerative powers before it was necessary.

She had survived the night, which presumably meant that Fury was still deciding what to do with her. Now it was time to prove that she could pull her weight, _but how?_

Aerla had no idea how long it would take for Thor to return, she could only hope that he would. In the meantime, she would amuse herself by annoying Stark and finding out what had happened after Phil had left the helicarrier for the final time. She found herself curious as to how SHIELD managed to fake his death, and she couldn’t ignore the sense of loss that whispered from him whenever he had talked about the Avengers.

A knock at the door startled her out of her exercises and she mutely shouldered her quiver before answering. She might be on the helicarrier and supposedly safe, but she hadn’t lived this long by not being constantly prepared.

It was Hawkeye.

“There are rumours there’s another archer around. I gotta scatter 'em before Natasha says Fury’s bumping me off.”

The man was leaning against her doorframe and he dragged his eyes from her bow to her face. Clint Barton, the Avenger’s and SHIELD’s archer, was testing her. Aerla knew that it would only be a matter of time before the two of them would come to challenge, and it intrigued her that Natasha Romanova was what spurred him into seeking her out.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, my blood's pretty old.” Barton raised an eyebrow at her joking tone but remained stubbornly silent, it made her smile. “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours?”

His lip tugged upwards. “Deal, I’ll meet you on the bridge in 5 minutes.”

“It’s a date.”

The man grinned, lightening his terse face to appear almost boyish, and pushed away to disappear down the corridor.

Aerla mused over the encounter; she should have expected Fury to send an agent of SHIELD and not one of the pure Avengers. She didn’t know how different the two groups were but she was instinctively drawn to the superheroes over the spies, the latter dealt in lies and coercion and that rubbed her fur the wrong way.

Absent-mindedly feathering her fingers over her arrows’ fletching, she delighted in the thrill of excitement that rippled up her spine. It had been far too long since she had shot against another archer, and she had heard of Hawkeye’s skill from across the pond. She wondered whether his invitation to the bridge meant that she was allowed to wander now, of course the cameras would be constantly watching her, but caged freedom was still freedom.

Aerla hadn’t been held accountable to anyone other than herself for a very long time, but it was surprisingly easy to settle into a submissive role; she was a wolf after all, it was second-nature to fit into a hierarchy.

There was something natural in the way that she carried everything she owned on her person, not having to worry about leaving her belongings behind to be trifled with. Her phone was a slight weight in her boot and her bow and quiver were a comforting presence on her shoulders as she wandered along the cold, metal corridors; the clicks of cameras following her footsteps.

The bridge was a hive of activity, of a hundred computers and clicking fingers. Avid concentration was a haze in the air but the atmosphere was relaxed. Aerla was surprised to find herself seemingly invisible as she meandered her way towards the floor-to-ceiling glass that served as a windscreen. It drew her forwards with its looming sense of vertigo and was far more interesting than whatever the many pilots were doing.

Her nose almost bumped the glass as fluffy clouds cascaded past, blue skies stretching as far as her eyes could see. She frowned at a slight flickering on either side of her vision and then mentally looked at her blueprints.

“What the Hell, are we invisible?” her voice was muffled by the murmurs and conversations in the room but served to carry a little distance. She hadn’t expected anyone to answer her.

“Essentially.”

A feminine voice from behind made Aerla turn around to see a woman in SHIELD uniform, her brown hair tied neatly out of the way. Aerla had seen this agent’s picture before.

“Maria,” Aerla kept the warmness from her voice despite hearing so many nice things about her. Things from a man who was meant to have died, and whilst Maria and Fury may know the truth, neither of them knew that Aerla did too.

“May I help you?” There was no smile, no similarities to the pictures she had seen in the last week. _The woman was definitely cut from the same cloth as Fury,_ Aerla thought idly.

Aerla shrugged and opted for honesty. “I’m not sure, I’m looking for Hawkeye.” Grinning to try and evoke a similar response, she was disappointed when only a frosty smile rose to the woman’s lips. Not receptive to friendliness then.

“May I suggest you look for him away from the bridge?” The agent was really quite cold, not the funny but firm woman she had heard about. Aerla looked around the room and realised half of its occupants were staring surreptitiously and the other half were blatant. It seemed she was not invisible after all.

“Ah, I apologise.” She moved away from the window and the chilly agent and purposefully stepped down from the platform, acutely aware of what the woman was trying to do. Being a wolf meant that Aerla knew more about asserting dominance than anyone on this damned ship, but she gave the woman her pride, because Aerla also knew how to manipulate it.

Maria Hill did not even nod at her, merely walked away and carried on doing her job, which was leading the bridge and organising the agents that suddenly returned to busying themselves. Aerla still wanted to watch the world go by outside of that window though, so she decided to lean against the closest piece of available wall.

Hawkeye appeared and stood close enough to her side that it soothed the hurt Maria had caused with her cold response. Aerla knew that she shouldn’t take it to heart, the woman was essentially Fury’s right-hand after all, but she didn’t think she deserved that harsh of a reception.

“You got on-board without anyone seeing.” Hawkeye murmured and Aerla realised that he was explaining Maria's reaction. Clarity dawned; she had undermined the woman who commanded the room so well, a veritable force of authority that was meant to know everything on the ship. Aerla was sorry she had angered Maria but perhaps it was for the best, it was harder to hide secrets when people were friendly, friendship was bittersweet that way.

“Thanks,” Aerla said, and meant it. Hawkeye inclined his head and they stood in comfortable silence before he began to fidget; he was impatient and it made her want to smile.

 “So,” he started and finally turned to face her. His outfit was a masculine version of her own, but with some sort of leather waistcoat. “Can you use that thing?” He looked pointedly at her bow.

She smiled slyly without looking at him. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Hawkeye grinned and beckoned she follow him. Exhilaration of a different kind tingling along her veins as her vertigo settled under her perfect balance. He led her past the control room and she paused to peek inside the closed doors. Stark and Banner were in there, their dark heads bowed in concentration. She thought she could hear a heavy beat barely pumping through the glass but Hawkeye coughed before she could place it.

He raised an eyebrow at her so she smiled sheepishly. “Habit?”

“Nosy,” he amended with a smirk.

Aerla felt her smile grow, _he was fun_. She trotted after him and memorised each twist and turn. They swiftly passed one fascinating door labelled “Armory”; she gave him an enquiring glance and he snorted, “Maybe later.”

“Damn,” Aerla laughed and didn’t take offence. She was still the unknown factor aboard the ship and whilst she may not look it, was potentially very dangerous. They didn’t know she was merely using them for her own ends, and not in a sneaky, try-to-end-the-world kind of way. This foray with Hawkeye could very well be the deciding factor on whether Fury let her stay aboard without a guard; she hoped it went well, because she really didn’t want to return to Phil with her tail between her legs to concoct another plan.

She stopped dead when they came to a door her mind’s eye recognised. It was the door to the prison they had planned for Banner’s monstrous side. Was her secret out, had Phil been unable to keep his promise? Hawkeye pressed his hand to the security station and she tensed further. Aerla really didn’t want this to end badly, not after he had been nice to her; had he been a better actor than she had given him credit for?

The door opened into an empty space, one very lacking for prisons and glass cells. Hawkeye indicated that she was to go first and, whilst her shoulder blades itched like crazy, she took a tentative step forward. Rails covered the walls in criss-cross and diagonal patterns, she chose one to follow and it ended in a metal object that looked suspiciously like a target. Turning to take in the entire circular room she saw that it was a range. Hawkeye’s face was smug.

“Some set up you have here,” Aerla murmured.

“It gets better.” He sounded delighted, as if he was about to share a clandestine truth. The room darkened and more target shaped objects lit up, hidden in the artificial light and revealed with a creepy glow in the dark.

“Wow… Why do you need glowing targets?” She turned on the spot as she spoke.

His voice came out of the darkness but she saw him with a wolf’s night vision, he was lit in shades of grey. “Practice, and it’s fun; like laser tag.”

“That’s a bit weird,” Aerla muttered as she looked around the room again.

“You don’t like laser tag?” he asked incredulously.

“No, no, I like laser tag.” It was one of her favourite modern past times. “But this is like, laser arrow tag, or laser archery practice. Do you even use a bow in here?” Aerla could imagine the archer darting around with a specially made laser gun, combat rolling around the room.

Said archer gave a startled and embarrassed laugh. “Occasionally. Careful.”

Hawkeye gave only a second’s notice for her to shut her eyes against the piercing glare that suddenly lit the room. She scowled at him but he brandished his bow, a metal and plastic beast.

“Challenge.” It was only half a question.

Aerla pulled her bow out of its holster with achingly familiar contentment and regarded it next to his. “I’m fairly certain you’re holding the bastard offspring of my baby.” Her polished wooden creation looked alien in this grey, steel room.

“Jealous?” He grinned confidently.

Aerla scoffed at him. “Yours is pretty, but mine’s proven.”

“And mine isn’t?”

“It’s like a family tree, a dozen generations down the line and you’ve bred out all of the great qualities,” she explained imperiously, hiding a smile.

He gave a derogatory sneer. “It’s called selective breeding and it means you eventually get the best of the best.”

Aerla waved a hand at him. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see.” She warmed the wood in her palms and ignored Hawkeye as he pretended to do the same. He rolled his shoulders and flexed muscles that made her shake her head. His biceps were twice the size of hers and yet he used a compound bow, famed for its low weight and easy draw. She knew without knowing that he could easily draw far more than she could; but where he was strong, she was fast.

She didn’t need her magic to beat him in archery but she eyed his bow; he didn’t need speed with that one, it would do most of the drawing for him. It didn’t need re-stringing and she didn’t doubt that Hawkeye used some sort of SHIELD metal composite to perfect the arrow weight.

“Is this going to be a proper challenge?” Aerla asked, knowing it sounded weak but wanting to know how seriously this would impact her status.

A glint appeared in his eye that reminded her of a shark that had scented blood in the water. “No, of course not; not with that archaic thing.”

“Ass.” He meant to test her properly then, everything hinged on these next few shots. Whilst she guessed that their strengths and weaknesses would balance out in a fair fight with the same weapons, she needed to even his mechanically-aided odds. “Tag.”

He grinned at her, joy evident on his face. The lights drowned as he called out, “You’re it.”

Her teeth bared in a laughing challenge that snapped _‘bring it on, Hawkeye’._

 

* * *

 

“Okay, I’m out.”

Aerla restrained the bark of satisfied laughter that wanted to sound at his mercy cry. “Out of mana already?”

He frowned at her in the darkness, whether at her fantastic quiver control or her nerdy reference she wasn’t sure, but she smiled regardless. Hawkeye shook his head and walked towards the control panel, her wolf eyes saw him do it so she was prepared for the blinding light as her pupils shrank so fast she could feel them changing.

Colour flooded Hawkeye’s grudging admiration as he fiddled with his ear piece. “You’re going to need a suit.”

Delight was a rush that crackled alongside the exertion, she had impressed him; impressed him enough that he was giving her the all clear to join their forces. It had been easy, they were testing her on the thing that she had spent a millennium honing. They might not trust her yet, but SHIELD apparently needed more firepower for some reason. “I think that was a compliment.”

He gave her a reluctant smirk. “Call it what you will, the armoury’s opened for you.”

“You have a quartermaster?” Aerla had not expected them to have one, it seemed very medieval and far more appropriate for her, rather than SHIELD.

Hawkeye aimed a strange look at her. “No, I just unlocked the door to the suits.”

“Oh.” Well now Aerla felt like an idiot out of time. However, a SHIELD suit was something that she had to see. The next question was what on Earth she was going to need a suit for.

“They’re fireproof, bulletproof, and most bad-things proof, we even have some in a nifty blue colour.”

“I like blue.” She did, she had a long history with blue actually.

“Yeah? It seems to be the colour of New York’s defenders.”

She didn’t understand the reference that made the man smile to himself so she cast a glance around the arrow-dotted room and heaved a happy sigh. “I’ll suit up then, thanks for the workout, Hawkeye.”

He plucked one of her arrows from a low hanging target and attempted to surreptitiously pocket it as he turned to her. “Call me Clint.”

“Aerla.” She smiled at him, letting him think he got away with the theft. Her arrows were a thing of beauty and whilst they were like gold dust now she was away from her home, she would exchange one of hers for one of his any day. Hawkeye – Clint – had access to SHIELDs scientists and she wanted to know what fantastic properties his weapons had, just in case she needed to use them against him one day.

He hooked his bow onto his back and nodded at hers. “You going to keep carrying that wooden thing around with you, Aerla?”

“This wooden thing proved you wrong,” she said, arching an eyebrow at his unenthusiastic shrug.

“It did okay, I’m more concerned about my reputation if it’s seen around the ship.”

Aerla smirked at his good-natured jab and brushed past him. “You're a cretin, goodbye.”

He looked at her with mock horror, hiding the humour that gleamed in his eyes. “You aren’t gonna help me collect the arrows?”

“No,” she said as she marvelled at the door’s recognition of her palm. “You insulted my bow and I have a suit to try on.”

“I’ll know how many you lost to me by?”

Laughing at his whining plea, she stepped through the doorway and called over her shoulder, “Good luck!” Aerla knew that she hadn’t lost; she had tallied the bow twangs. _Count that, Clint Barton_ , she thought as his grumbles followed her down the corridor.

Score two for Aerla, not only had she made a good impression on the archer, but she might have built a good amount of rapport with him too. Life was certainly getting far more interesting than she had thought it would a few weeks ago. _This was almost going too well_ , she thought with the pessimistic attitude of someone who had lived for far too long around people who lived far too little.

Halting outside the interesting door that was now apparently unlocked for her, she tilted her head to the side. The archery range’s door had opened under her palm and she wondered when exactly they had scanned her prints. The answer was surely never, she specifically didn’t touch any of Stark’s inventions and SHIELD's scientists didn’t pay any attention to her hands.

The door opened under her gaze and she only barely restrained the urge to growl at it in surprise. There was no one else in the hallway and a quick peek through the door revealed it to be empty. Eyeing the door frame as she prowled under it, it startled her again by closing once she was fully in the room.

“What the Hell?” Nothing answered her muttered question so she turned to survey the room; there were more gates and areas she imagined were definitely not unlocked for her. Questing near each of them, her lip quivered at the tell-tale, unmistakable scent of Tesseract behind a very thick door. It was a bitter smell, overpowering the tantalising starlight that lingered underneath it. The magic she was born with did not know how to react to the mysterious presence.

What god-made devices did SHIELD still have on board? Phil had said that Thor had taken the Tesseract back with him when he removed Loki, so what did Fury have his grubby hands on? Humans should not have access to such technology, or magic, or whatever it was classified as; Odin had abandoned Earth and they should have been left alone until they knew how to reach the stars.

Aerla felt torn, a lonely part of her urged theft and sneaking around to finally get all of her answers, but the other part, the one with teeth and magic, did not want humans exposed to such dangerous articles. She cursed Odin once more, the oaths well-rehearsed and vicious in their aged remembrance.

But now wasn’t the time to dwell on such old grievances, she was so close to the turning point and she couldn’t distract herself with the mortals’ problems anymore, it was her turn now and she just had to wait a little longer.

Aerla ignored her rumbling wolf in favour of the racks upon racks of clothing that covered the walls. Her fingers brushed over all the different fabrics and her magic quailed under her skin, there were too many new inventions at work here. The suits famed properties of protection were the exact reason she would prefer not to wear them.

Her magic would struggle around the composite materials, would be stifled under the plastics and alloys present in the suits. She was a creature from the past and wanted to bat away the modern outfits. She frowned; Hawkeye didn’t wear one, and neither did any of the Avengers she had seen, so why should she?

“Would you like some help, ma’am?”

Aerla snarled and spun on her heel, desperately seeking the polite voice and trying to turn her feral noise into a cough. She had not had to hide her lupine movements in an age; it was proving difficult to smother a part of her nature as she tried to lower her raised lip. Feigning nonchalance, she stalked the room. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced?”

“My apologies, ma’am, my name is Jarvis. I am an artificial intelligence service that Mr Stark created.”

Her fur settled slowly and she fell back onto her heels, rocking slightly as she pinpointed the voice from some overhead speakers. “Greetings, Jarvis, my name is Aerla.”

“It is nice to meet you, ma’am.”

A wry smile tugged at her lip, she recognised that tone. She had a feeling that this Jarvis would not call her Aerla, it was an old argument she had encountered before, when servants controlled her world. It may have been many years since a butler had waited at her beck and call but she still knew their ways, one thing she would never forget was their ability to somehow know absolutely everything, especially secrets.

“Jarvis?” she said under her breath, incomprehensibly.

“Yes, ma’am?”

Okay, no muttering was going to happen aboard this ship; at least he wasn’t psychic. “Are you all over the helicarrier?”

“Mr Stark has designed me to be an entirely sufficient entity, akin to a servant without physical form, but of course my presence in SHIELD mainframes is purely minimal.”

She arched an eyebrow at the air and immediately doubted his words, because now the sentient doors made sense, but mostly because the arrogant inventor in the other room would never be happy unless he knew absolutely everything. Fury might think that he controlled Stark but no one that intelligent was ever fully in submission, it was a survival instinct after all.

Aerla appealed to the entity, wanting to know more and using his terms to appease him, “So does Mr Stark use your services in his home, as well?”

“I am present in everything Mr Stark creates.”

That meant that the AI was in Stark’s suits too, she was fascinated. “You sound pretty amazing, Jarvis.”

“You are too kind, ma’am. I am merely a computer program.”

She restrained the urge to snort out loud, Tony Stark created no mere computers, and Jarvis did not seem a mere program. Aerla decided to drop the subject though, because he would never say otherwise, he was programmed not to.

“Who makes these suits, Jarvis?” she asked as she analysed the rows of fabric.

“SHIELD does, ma’am, is there something in particular you are looking for?”

A frown marred her forehead; the AI was remarkably astute for a piece of technology. The urge to test him was overpowering in its curiosity. “I don’t know whether you noticed but I prefer simpler things.”

“Cotton and leather do not repel attacks as well, ma’am.”

Eyebrows rising she nodded grudgingly, this invention was exceeding her expectations and it captivated her; how could it know what she was wearing? “Unfortunately true, Jarvis, but the fact remains that I do not want to wear one of these.”

“Perhaps you could choose one for now, should the need to wear one arise?”

Distaste had her wrinkling her nose but a series of almost forgotten friendships had her conceding to the voice that spoke like a butler. “Fair enough, you win. Which one?”

“Turn to your left, ma’am, there is a stand marked ‘4’, it contains the simplest of materials but will still offer some protection.”

Following the directions lead her to a rack of suits that her magic barely reacted to. Why they had these as an option she didn’t know, but she flicked through the fabrics regardless. “Any more suggestions?”

“The third one from the right, black; it has the extra length you will need if you bend.”

Aerla wanted to hunt Stark down and demand he tell her everything about his invention, because she was absolutely enthralled by it. The proposed suit was a tempting sight, but before she could try it on she realised that Jarvis’s recommendation meant that he could definitely ‘see’. “Do you monitor everything on board, Jarvis?”

“Only what Mr Stark requires.”

Which meant absolutely everything; remembering the man’s dangerous humour, she wouldn’t put it past him to record and save it all too. At least she had found out before she took some midnight strolls with metal under her paws. Aerla nibbled her lip. “Would you mind doing me a favour, Jarvis?”

“If it is within my power, ma’am.”

Politeness and history had her asking, “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to not record me whilst I changed, please?”

Aerla could swear that his voice came a fraction of a second slower than it had before, “Of course, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Jarvis.”

She tugged her quiver off of her shoulder and prepared to undress but a small smile creeped onto her face when the AI replied the tiniest bit quieter, “Thank you for asking, ma’am.”

Aerla decided that she loved Jarvis.

The suit fit perfectly, even if it felt cloying and made her magical birthright shudder under her skin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and faultless politeness, are all mine.


	4. Confrontation and Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stark's head whipped to hers as Banner raised his eyebrows. Aerla offered a saccharine smile. “Jarvis is a gentleman, you could take a leaf out of his book, you know?”

>   
> “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend…”
> 
> -       Faramir, son of Denethor ~ J.R.R. Tolkien, _'The Two Towers'_

 

The new suit was a slight weight over her arm as she thanked Jarvis one last time and left the armoury. Aerla half-expected the door to sigh as it shut but tried to remember that this was an airship, not a spaceship, for all of the AI’s apparent capacity for emotion.

A bundle of arrows greeted her in the hallway and she settled them in her quiver where they belonged, noting with a smile that at least two were missing. Her fellow archer was not very subtle. Thoughts lingering on the man, she veered away from her little accommodation and headed towards the control room; she had seen Hawkeye’s ear piece and wanted one for herself.

If she was to be a part of their teams, for whatever reasons they needed her, she wanted to be fully integrated, and that meant getting her paws on some of SHIELD’s tech. Whilst she could have asked one of the agents, Aerla grasped the opportunity to interrogate Stark about his own amazing inventions, and if she could wrangle some of his toys as well, even better.

The glass doors were open this time, so she strolled in as quietly as she could so as not to distract the two inhabitants. If she was honest with herself, she would know that she just wanted to be around people again, Clint had only mildly soothed the itch of needing human contact.

Stark and Banner worked intently in the back, neither noticing her arrival, and it settled something agitated inside of her as she hopped onto the closest of the three counters. Aerla placed the folded suit to the side and pulled her phone out of her boot to cross her legs, fidgeting until she was comfortable.

The tinny noises from her hands served to alert the two scientists and she watched them stealthily. Banner raised his eyebrows briefly before shaking his head and returning to his work, whilst Stark narrowed his eyes at her and affected some serious ignorance. The former reaction pleased her; she liked this room, it suited her with all of its technology and apparent calm.

Aerla began tapping furiously, losing herself in her phone until she felt Stark’s frustration rise higher and higher and then she heard him mutter crossly, “What does she want?”

Banner’s unruffled reply was inaudible but he inclined his head in her direction, apparently signalling the storm of anger to come striding over.

She spoke up before he could, “Hey, can I have one of those ear thingies?”

Stark paused for a second before lifting an arm to his ear and then showing her its contents, a tiny piece of machinery that was dwarfed by his hand. “What, this, you didn’t get one?”

He was mocking her so she rolled her eyes. “No, I think Fury’s trying his best to ignore me until he knows what I want.”

“What _do_ you want?”

“An ear thingy.”

Aerla smiled inwardly when he became more agitated. “It is an ear _piece_ and _what_ are you doing on your phone that's so important?”

“You have no idea how important this is.” She still refused to look at him and angled her phone away when he tried to look at it.

“What are you doing?” his voice was layered with irritation and curiosity.

“I am defending the world,” she replied with gravitas.

Stark seemed dubious for a man with a metal suit and a hyper-intelligent robotic entity. “On there?”

“Yep.”

“How?” he asked with outstretched hands.

“One ear thingy at a time.” Aerla leaned forward quickly to grab at his closest hand which happened to also hold his ear piece. “Yoink! Thanks, Glow.”

She hopped off of the table and skipped out of the room. Fury seemed to be avoiding her so she had to ingratiate herself however she knew how; in this case it was annoying Tony Stark. The fact that she enjoyed it had no impact, of course.

Electricity, rather than fire, licked at her fingertips now.

“That doesn’t belong to you!” He said, barely restraining his anger as it flew through the air.

“It does now.” She called over her shoulder, inserting the little machine into her ear and hearing a voice that was now familiar. “Oh, hey Jarvis.”

Aerla grinned when she felt Stark seethe behind her, she had missed humans.

 

* * *

 

Later, she was stalking back to the annoying inventor. Aerla had spent a captivating hour with her ear piece and by association, Jarvis. It was second nature for her to talk to the entity, she had been a loner by enforced choice for so many years and speaking out loud was the norm. Having someone other than herself answer her questions, and with such intelligence, fascinated her.

Jarvis was amazing.

She had been listening to him glibly correct her hand-stand’s stance for the third time when he had fallen silent on the fourth. At first she thought she had perfected the acrobatic move, but when she had called out to him he had responded through the ceiling’s speaker and surprised her into falling on her butt.

“It would seem I have been taken off of your ear piece, ma’am.”

That was why she was storming into the control room with her hands on her hips and glaring at a busy-looking but satisfied Tony Stark, _annoying man._

“Hey,” she called, and he regarded her like she was a gnat he wished he could squish. “Did you take Jarvis off of my ear thingy?”

“Ear _piece,_ and yes, you’ll just spoil him.”

Aerla grinned and gently laid her fingers on the tiny piece of tech. “There’s nothing wrong with that, all computers need a bit of love. I still have a mouse from when I was 10.” _Well, 10 years ago, perhaps_ , she clarified silently.

“I had already built my first computer by that age,” Stark said with superiority.

“Yes,” she drawled in response and plucked her phone from her boot, swiping on the screen as she continued, “And now you’re the smartest man in the universe, yadda yadda yadda.”

Stark nodded at her bowed head. “Thank you for saying so-“ He twitched at a distinctive sound from her phone. “You’re playing a game.”

“Yep,” Aerla said without looking up.

“That’s what you’ve been doing this entire time?” Incredulity lit his features and she hid a smile.

“Yep.”

“You said you were defending the world.”

“I am,” she replied with affected obviousness. “With plants and sunlight.”

Banner strode over to them to access a file she had just sat next on; she apologised but he brushed it aside in a friendly fashion as Stark interrupted them, “She’s playing video games.”

“I know,” Banner said absent-mindedly as he scanned the document. “You didn’t know?”

Stark looked around the room as if asking for clarity. “How would I know?”

“Jarvis didn’t tell you?”

Stark stilled like a hunter that had sighted prey and Aerla looked up at him from under her lashes.

“Jarvis?” he called out.

“Yes, sir?” The reply came from empty space. Aerla looked around for the source but chalked it up to another aspect of Stark’s technological brilliance.

“Is she playing games?” Stark's calculating eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

“I’m not on that system, sir.”

“Yes, you are. Check.”

Aerla returned to dutifully defending the world, concealing a smirk. “Spying on me, Glow? I’m hurt.” She was not at all surprised that Stark was doing so, more that he managed to infiltrate her property without her realising. However, she had been expecting it - this was SHIELD, after all - and she always planned accordingly.

Stark stepped forward to spawn a screen on the counter she was sat on. Hundreds of squares flickered into existence on the lit table-top, forming neatly to the side of her behind. Aerla let out a laugh of delight and swished a hand, causing them to scatter. _Amazing._ Stark scowled at her and brought the screen back to order.

She watched his eyes narrow further at something and then he flared his fingers repeatedly, each time bringing the figurative camera in further and further. Aerla watched in amazement, her eyes trying to take in all of the fantastic technology she hadn’t even been aware of. She was a pretty modern girl nowadays, but Stark truly was a genius.

He focused on a selection of a dozen boxes lit in different colours and wrapped in assorted types of lines. Confusion crept onto his face but she could tell he tried to keep it from her when he gritted his teeth instead.

“Jarvis,” Stark spoke to the ceiling again as she dragged her eyes from his toy. “Why isn’t she showing up in the mainframe?”

Aerla demurely looked back to the table top, avoiding Banner’s sudden amused interest. She tilted her head at the glowing boxes and focused on one covered in lines of gold; something about it spoke of padlocks. Whilst Stark continued to be distracted she lightly brushed a finger onto the enticing square, it flared red for a moment and the recognition clicked into place.

It was the colour of the Iron Man suit.

“She’s hidden, sir.”

Stark’s lips pursed at Jarvis’s response and she wanted to smile again. Instead, she tapped the locked square once more, the red flaring far less this time, almost as if it were acquiescing.

“Why?” the inventor enunciated very carefully.

“She asked me to do so.”

Stark's head whipped to hers as Banner raised his eyebrows. Aerla offered a saccharine smile. “Jarvis is a gentleman, you could take a leaf out of his book, you know?”

“What did you do?” A vicious threat laced Stark’s words.

Aerla gave him her best innocent look, suddenly feeling like a deer in headlights. “Like Jarvis said, I merely asked him. He was on my ear thingy anyway, and he was in the armoury this morning.” Stark made the tiniest of movements that proved his technology was not known to have infiltrated the entire helicarrier; _Fury was a fool._

“I knew you were watching me and I didn’t want you to, so I asked Jarvis to refrain from keeping tabs on me. He was very obliging, unlike _you_.” Her voice rose at the end as she tried to turn the unusual little squirming of fear into confidence. Maybe fiddling with Iron Man's toys was not such a good idea, after all.

Stark advanced ever-so-slowly towards her and Aerla had to hold herself so very still, the instinctual desire to fight or flee quivering under her skin. She tilted her chin upwards as if to say that she wasn’t cowed, but then he licked his lips and her eyes were drawn like flies to honey. Except that Stark was vinegar and an Avenger and really shouldn’t be so very attractive.

It had evidently been far too long since she had been around humans.

Mortifyingly, the fear turned into interest and she inhaled sharply, mentally wincing at her ineptitude. Stark twitched almost imperceptibly again but this time realisation dawned in his eyes. Aerla knew she was teetering on the edge of exposing a seriously stupid vulnerability to the handsome scientist, but it had been an age…

He approached a little closer and she was trapped between him and the counter she had foolishly sat upon. The sense of nervousness kindled exponentially as he bit his lip, and then she let out a noise that could only be described as eager.

_Damn it._

“Aha,” Stark murmured and Aerla realised that she had royally screwed herself when victory immediately replaced faux-heat across his face.

“What are you two doing?”

Stark’s eyes flickered over her shoulder but even Steve Rogers couldn’t dim the sense of achievement that currently blared from him. Humiliation assaulted her; she had shown him a glaring weakness all because of one stupid lip bite. The billionaire was a womaniser; he played with sexual appeal like it was one of his own damned inventions.

“I think she hacked Jarvis.”

Aerla flinched at Banner’s voice, she had forgotten him secreted at the back of the room, and judging from Stark’s blink, he had forgotten too.

“His computer thing?” The Captain questioned, finally dousing Stark’s triumph.

“Why does everyone feel the need to tack that word on when technology is involved?”

Saved from those mocking brown eyes she could finally slide out and away from him. She tried not to look at anyone but couldn’t help but see Banner staring at her annoyingly hot cheeks.

“However, my learned friend is incorrect; it would seem our female Hawkeye is far easier to understand than we previously thought.” Satisfaction lay thick in Stark’s words and she imagined that he looked like the cat that had gotten the cream.

He was too arrogant and her sickening shame too much, so she decided to do what she did best: cause mischief in the sweetest way that she knew how. Nibbling the inside of her cheek, she turned to the counter that still showed the padlocked box and flourished a hand. Letting her finger fall onto that one particular square, she whispered incomprehensibly, “Help me embarrass him, please.”

Something that had developed far beyond a normal artificial intelligence and reminded her of her past came through for her pathetic plea. No red flared under her nail; instead the box seemed to shatter, exposing millions of files hidden within. Stark started to move so she jabbed at one file that was coloured in the tiniest amount of red and gold; _thank you, Jarvis._

Aerla copied the finger flaring gesture she had seen earlier and suddenly Stark’s drunken face appeared on every reflective surface in the room. Incoherent singing and mumbled swear words from the overhead speakers had his eyes widening as he turned slowly to the largest screen.

She edged closer to him. “Give me Jarvis back, please.”

“Done.”

The video stopped immediately and Aerla retreated to the safest place in the room, behind the Captain, who watched her with a surprised grin. “I won’t protect you from him, you know?”

“Yeah, you will, you can’t resist. Help, he’s seen me.” She pretended to hide behind the man that radiated friendliness, even if she was actually a little terrified of Stark. The man was ruthlessly intelligent and she had no idea why his AI had helped her, but the inventor would ensure she paid for the prompt retaliation. However, judging from the way Banner laughed kindly and placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder, she might be safe for now.

Stark watched her with eyes that promised retribution and she couldn’t stop the guilty smile that rose to her lips. He might think he had her figured out but he had played his cards too soon, Aerla knew his game now, she wouldn’t be fooled by his charms again. Still, she breathed a sigh of relief when Stark finally looked away and asked, “What do you want, Cap?”

Steve lifted an arm to watch her peeking at Stark. “We’re debriefing the newbie.”

She looked up at him in surprise and stepped out to bring their heights closer together, he was only two inches taller than she in the end. “Me? Awesome.”

Her wolf snapped at something to her side and Aerla muffled a squeak when Stark took one menacing step closer. Sardonic humour glinted in his eyes so she scowled at him and turned to Steve again. “Are we waiting on anyone else?”

“Yes, Clint and Natasha- Ah, here they are.”

Shoulder blades itching, she located the source as being the very dangerous-looking woman that prowled into the room. Black Widow, Natasha Romanova, SHIELD agent and assassin extraordinaire, was giving her the once over and murmuring something to Clint. If Aerla hadn’t had lupine senses, she might not have picked up the quiet ‘bumping you off’ and she saw the scathing smirk that Clint responded with.

Clint held out a steady palm so she gripped it happily as he asked, “Where’s your suit?”

“I found one; I just prefer my own clothes for now, thanks though.”

Stark’s dry voice had her rolling her eyes. “We don’t even know who she is, why is she here?”

“Maybe if you asked politely I would tell you,” Aerla said as she exchanged wary nods with Romanova. The woman was something else, like daggers edged with poison that struck in the dark; it made Aerla’s wolf rumble aggressively. Aerla turned to see Banner watching her so she composed herself and smiled encouragingly at Steve.

“Introductions are in order, I guess,” he hedged.

Stark snorted, “She knows who we are.”

“As it happens, I do, it’s not as if you aren’t all over the news lately.” It was easy to avoid mentioning Phil and breaking her promise, New York was still in raptures over its superheroes and saviours.

Steve grimaced at the mention of publicity. “Well, SHIELD can’t hide everything.”

SHIELD were hiding other similar circumstances? That couldn’t be right, she might not have paid much attention to America recently, but she would have noticed some menacing uprisings, _surely._

Stark was typing on the counter she had vacated earlier, glancing at her occasionally. “Nothing wrong with a bit of publicity.”

“For you, we all know how much the world loves Iron Man.”

“Loves _Tony Stark,_ ” he corrected Clint and the room seemed to collectively sigh in exasperation. It made Aerla want to laugh; the group seemed quite united considering the Avengers was a fairly new concept. Then again, fighting for your life tended to bring people closer together, she knew all about that, had visited enough graves which would forever hold a place in her heart.

Aerla spoke to distract herself from her memories, and to annoy Stark, “Not the whole world; Britain isn’t that affected by pretty lights, we’re more into our Norse mythology.”

Banner smiled at her jibe. “I imagine most of Europe prefers it.”

Glowering at both of them, Stark continued to tap away at things she couldn’t see but really wanted to. “Who are you, then?”

“My name's Aerla, the rest doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Nope, if Fury’s okay with me being here, you should be too.”

“I don’t answer to SHIELD.”

“And yet here you are.” She smiled sweetly at him, remembering belatedly that she was already on his shit list without adding fuel to the vinegar fire.

Steve interrupted them both before it descended into madness. “SHIELD was created for a reason, to keep people safe, if you’re here, you must be willing to stand alongside us.”

She frowned at him. “What are SHIELD keeping people safe from? The Chitauri were neutralised, Loki’s all locked up, what’s left?”

“The Chitauri were just the alien threat, we have underlying concerns closer to home.”

“Seriously? Who?”

The Captain suddenly looked tired. “HYDRA.”

The mood in the room soured. Aerla accessed her mental Rolodex, trying to sift through memories, and didn't like what she found. A human organisation using alien technology – and hadn’t that surprised her – it had made itself known in Steve’s time, had prompted the serum that would turn him into the superpowered man he was today. She wanted to grimace at the thought of the Tesseract, reminding her of the bitter scent in the armoury.

“I thought HYDRA went up in ashy flames?” It was the only result that had soothed her anxiety, that everything alien had been destroyed. She had been cashing in on old favours to get to Germany when the explosive news had hit: Captain America had saved the day and disappeared.

“It’s in the name,” Stark muttered as he continued to type. “Cut off one head, two more take its place.”

More mythology, but this time of Greek origin; at least that one wasn’t real, she wasn’t sure she could deal with two sets of overbearing gods fucking up her life.

“On the scale of kittens to alien-related death, how terrified should I be?” She asked in Stark’s direction and noted with a pleased smile that Clint grinned at her.

“That depends.” Stark rubbed an eye and finally looked up at Steve. “What do they have this time?”

“A new island.”

Aerla turned back to Stark and tilted her head at him in a silent question. He shrugged. “About a five.”

The tension lightened and then videos appeared on the walls, courtesy of Stark. Aerla noticed Romanova frown slightly but she was distracted by the grainy images of land and sea. “What am I looking at?"

Steve closed in on the largest screen. “They’re still rebuilding, not a huge danger, but reports show movement on the shores.”

“Do they have any dangerous toys?” she asked, still perturbed at the idea of secret disturbances.

Steve ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Not that we can see, but who knows? The Chitauri left a lot behind and SHIELD couldn’t clear up everything, for all we know HYDRA might have adapted some technology.”

Aerla cursed silently, Loki brought the aliens here and was dragged away before he could pay for it. Someone should have made him and Thor help clean up; damned gods and their politics, always thinking that they knew best.

“What else has been happening?” Curiosity got the better of her, curiosity and the urge to protect. Aerla didn’t like the thought of evil little groups trying to dominate the planet. These were dangerous times, Earth needed to band together and show a united front to whatever was out there, not bicker amongst themselves.

Steve looked over briefly, presumably wondering how much she knew. It was proving annoying not being able to mention Phil, and she berated herself for not paying closer attention to America. All of this had been happening under her nose and now she was at a disadvantage.

“There are one or two more who are proving a nuisance," Steve said haltingly. "But we aren’t concerning ourselves with them.”

That was a strange statement but it vibrated with finality, she was not to ask further questions. Her wolf didn’t like being dismissed but Aerla kept her tongue in check because she was meant to be blending in, not causing waves.

Aerla fidgeted, everything she thought she knew was changing, and she didn’t like it. She had assumed that being with SHIELD was a simple wait-out-the-clock scenario, but now it turned out that SHIELD were defending against attacks all of this time.  “Why doesn’t the rest of the world know about this?”

The videos switched off and Steve turned to her. “SHIELD works best behind the scenes, the world isn’t ready to know there’s more out there.”

Aerla wanted to scoff at their supposed superiority, humans were hilariously stubborn. “Why form the Avengers then, why make a big song and dance about the invasion?”

“People need something to hide behind, they need motivation. We’re the front men.”

Stark’s face darkened at Steve’s words and she could only imagine he was thinking of Phil, but Clint spoke up before she could analyse it further, “For when the shit hits the fan.”

That certainly explained why Fury had so readily accepted her into the ranks, apparently they were always fighting off threats. Admiration filled her at the thought of the secret battles that waged throughout time. She asked Romanova because she was SHIELD, and Steve was only recently awoken, “How long has this been going on for?”

“On and off since World War II.”

Aerla whistled in amazement. She had been ignorant, so concerned with her homeland and watching for Norse whispers that she hadn’t paid attention to across the pond. Admittedly, she had never expected any Asgardian markers to appear in America, the landmass never even knew the Norse, _no matter what Neil Gaiman said._

If she had known that HYDRA hadn’t crumbled under the Captain’s onslaught, would she have offered her services? Yes, she would have done, just as she was planning to do now. Magic might lace her veins but she still lived amongst humans, had pretended to be a normal one for so long. Aerla would defend the planet that had harboured her, defend it against anything that endangered it, for now.

“I’m in.”

Steve and Banner smiled at her whilst Clint clapped her on the shoulder, his voice gravelly, “Good, 'cause I’ve reset the range.”

Something that she had locked away so long ago warmed at their reception, Aerla hadn’t been around comrades for an age and her wolf was becoming content once again. She might have chosen to be a recluse but she was a pack animal at heart, and her fellow archer was already making her smile.

Stark might serve to rub her fur the wrong way and Romanova made her hackles rise, but she was good at forging paths, and if she was able to get her blood pumping whilst she waited for Thor? That sat very well with her, she owed the planet a duty after all.

Steve dismissed them, telling them to be ready in case HYDRA attacked. Aerla was surprised to see Clint and Romanova nod at him; they seemed content to take directions from the Avenger, despite being SHIELD agents. The Captain did have a natural leadership about him; a loyalty originated one, very different from Fury’s bullying. Aerla knew a lot about rulers and she knew very well that the latter type inspired nasty revolutions.

The former strode off with the two agents, presumably to update Fury on the situation, so she hovered in the control room. She had become uneasy around Stark and she didn’t like it, didn’t want to think that she needed to be on her guard around him. Romanova was one thing, the woman was a born killer, but the Avengers were a different kettle of fish, and she wanted to trust them whilst she was here.

An enticing aroma of coffee floated through the air and she followed her nose to the tricky inventor, who was pouring a rather healthy amount of the stuff into a mug painted a familiar red. Aerla gave a frowning smirk at the sign of vanity and he scowled at her. “There’s none for you.”

She saw Bruce smile as he watched them askance; the doctor was relaxed so she assumed she wasn’t going to be Iron Man’d any time soon. Aerla wrinkled her nose at the dark, bitter liquid. “It smells nice, but no thank you, I prefer tea.”

Stark snorted disdainfully, “You would.”

She raised an eyebrow but ignored his jab at a British stereotype. It was strange seeing the billionaire with something so normal as a cup of coffee, she was used to him in a suit, metal or expensive cloth. Instead, he was dressed in a Black Sabbath t-shirt and some jeans, clutching his kitsch collectible, and glaring at her, but there was no genuine hostility in his bearing.

Stark mutely passed a second cup in a similar colour to Banner who gave him an absent-minded smile. The two were really quite adorable in their strange but fitting friendship. It struck Aerla as quite funny that she was more cautious of Stark than the doctor who could crush her with one anger-induced green fist, but she knew first-hand that size did not always equal danger.

Banner was an exercise in control, he was always breathing steadily and holding himself still, it soothed her wolf to be near his calm energy. Stark on the other hand was a constantly buzzing storm, prone to electrical outbursts that stung or scared, even if he did look quite tame at the moment.

Holding his cup in one hand, he swirled the other at something on her vacated counter so she leaned forward to see, curiosity getting the better of her. A 3D image popped up into the air between them and she leaped back with a squeak whilst he laughed at her with his eyes.

She glared at him and fidgeted, trying to settle her fur as she surveyed the robotic type creature. “Is that one of HYDRA’s contraptions?”

He shook his head, mirth slightly creasing his cheeks. Aerla ignored his taunting air in favour of examining the new assailant. She raised her hand but halted before she reached the image, choosing to gain some favour before she touched without permission. Levelling an inquiring eyebrow at him he nodded once so she batted the 3D representation, sending it spinning in circles. The inventor of such amazing technology watched her as she tilted her head and flared her hand to stop the turning.

Her hands made movements that she presumed Jarvis interpreted for her, and she expanded her gestures to focus on one of the robot’s legs. She flicked its foot, lifting the image to show its underbelly. “The legs aren’t even welded on, just focus on the connection and they should break, right?” Aerla looked up from her musing to find both men staring at her. “I play a lot of video games,” she said by way of blushing explanation to Banner’s enquiring smile.

Stark frowned and clenched his fingers, crushing the image. “It’s not our fight.”

She stiffened at his dismissive words. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Your analysis, although accurate, is unnecessary.”

“Why do you have a picture of it then?” she almost snapped in reply.

“I like to know everything.”

Her humour thoroughly diminished at his cagey and dismissive attitude, she decided to quote at him, “It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.”

Banner blinked in surprise. “Tolkien?”

“No other,” she replied, keeping an eye on Stark's scowl. Aerla didn’t like how hot-and-cold Stark seemed to blow; at one moment he was teasing her and at the other he closed off.

“What business does a twenty-something have reading dusty Tolkien?”

Aerla arched a brow at Stark’s deprecating tone. “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, Glow.” A classic example stood in front of him, just because she looked young didn't mean that she actually was. As it happened, her library was chock-full of ‘dusty’ books, and none of them were as old as she.

She wanted to swipe at his expressionless face, just to put an emotion on it. He wasn’t giving anything away and she hated it, humans were meant to be easy to read, but Stark was different. Before she could give in to the urge and do something risky, the overhead speakers clicked on and Steve’s voice sounded.

“Stark, we need you on the outside, now.”

The man didn’t even reply, just drummed his fingers once on the counter and then stormed out of the room. Aerla turned to Banner and spread her hands. “What the Hell?”

He sighed, “He doesn’t like being up here, if Fury wasn’t focusing on you, he’d be crowding Tony and trying to get him to make new weapons.”

“What’s wrong with that, that’s his job, isn’t it?”

“It _was_.” Banner frowned, almost as if he was disappointed in her assessment. “A lot has happened since he became an Avenger.”

Aerla didn’t know how to react to his frown so she answered his words instead, “Understandable, he has other people to account to now, that’s cloying, it sucks, but that doesn’t warrant his dickish behaviour.” She wasn’t biting people’s heads off, and she had far more pent up frustration than Stark did. He didn’t have a creature living under his skin that hated everything about the steel cage that carried them. “ _You’re_ dealing with it.”

He shrugged in response. “I don’t like it much either, but I’m used to people watching me like I might explode any second, Tony’s a lone wolf.”

She rolled her eyes; Stark had no idea about being alone. If he wanted to think he was a special snowflake, _fine_ , but she knew better. “Stark needs to get over himself.”

Banner raised a brow. “Do you know everything he went through?”

She scoffed at the cliché phrase. “Does he, or any of you, know what I have been through? No, it’s the past, and I try not to let any of it affect the present.”

“Then you’re stronger than he is.”

Aerla opened her mouth but closed it again. That was a manipulative move on Banner’s behalf; he was implying that she should take Stark with a grain of salt because she had the mental upper hand. Whilst true - she had had far longer to come to terms with her demons - Aerla didn’t agree with coddling. But did her long-lived state make her superior, and therefore mean she should be more tolerant of others less experienced?

She didn’t know what to think, so she left to track Starkdown, ignoring Banner’s concerned eyes on her back.

When had humans become so complicated?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and psychological tripwires, are all mine.


	5. Soldiers and Sojourns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glowing blur of red and gold whizzed past, distracting her from morbid thoughts as she sighed, “Of course, he’s a glow fly, well that figures.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and thieving tendencies, are all mine.

>   
> “Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they’ve been given.”
> 
> -       Orson Scott Card, _'Ender’s Game'_

 

As it turned out, Stark was impossible to reach. Jarvis’s suddenly clipped tones informed her that he was currently donning his Iron Man suit and flitting about outside the helicarrier.

It soured a newly exposed part of her that she seemed to have upset the AI and she imagined it was due to the argument that had transpired in the control room. The corridors were empty so she indulged the guilt-fuelled urge. “I’m sorry, Jarvis, I just don’t like being spoken down to.”

There was a brief pause before he responded, “No one does, ma’am.”

She wondered whether the AI had the capabilities to understand what she was implying, that if she could treat a computer with more respect than Stark had shown her, something was wrong.

Aerla was only slightly surprised when he spoke again, “Turn left, ma’am, the Avengers tend to gather in the west hangar.”

She smiled at the ceiling. “Thank you, Jarvis, you truly are amazing.”

He didn’t reply, but she thought her ear piece had vibrated softly in acknowledgement. She changed direction and walked through the opening door into a large, very windy room. The space was empty of machinery but the bay door was down, exposing her to the elements as dark, broody clouds drifted by.

Steve Rogers, patriotic hero triumphant, sat on a welded bench along one wall, polishing his iconic shield. Aerla walked past him to advertise her presence and to let the wind tear her hair from her braid. He didn’t say anything, so neither did she, choosing instead to enjoy the whipping breeze.

It felt like an age since her feet had touched ground, first Phil’s plane, and now this metal mansion. The brisk air had her wanting to run on her paws in a way that she hadn’t dared since she had left Britain. Yes, she had shifted in scant breaths, once for Phil, and it had been painful to wear her human skin again.

Aerla wasn’t used to living under such scrutiny and so, in a way, she could easily empathise with Stark. Banner’s disappointment at her callous assessment of the inventor made her uncomfortable. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was not a new concept to her, she had seen it occur more and more in recent centuries; each time humanity invented a new weapon the emotional fallout seemed to scale in aggression along with it.

The man behind her was an example of such a time. Although most of her knowledge of the Avengers came from SHIELD, she remembered Steve’s story through telegrams and newspapers. Aerla wondered whether he thought himself the only person lost in the timeline, who remembered war, whether he still suffered explosion-studded dreams and woke up in a cold sweat. They would share the same grievances if he did, but she was long used to the overpowering fear that had her waking up with a cry in her throat.

A glowing blur of red and gold whizzed past, distracting her from morbid thoughts as she sighed, “Of course, he’s a glow _fly_ , well that figures.”

“How so?” the Captain asked as he continued his polishing.

“He’s annoying and far too bright for his own good.”

Steve paused to look at her. “That’s something we can both agree on.”

As he gave a surprised laugh, she turned to him with wide eyes. “I’m more concerned than you are at that, Cap, trust me.” The man with an apparent heart of beaten gold discomfited her a little, he was too much a strait-laced solider, so content with following orders.

Steve smiled, oblivious to her thoughts, and returned to his task. His face was still warm with humour and Aerla took a moment to appreciate him. He had one of those faces that always seemed on the edge of a smile, inherently youthful. Only balanced with his eyes out of time and according to Phil’s crew, abs you could bounce nickels off of. Aerla could never remember which one the nickel was, but then she was sure that it wouldn’t matter if the experiment ever came to fruition, which it never would.

He stopped his cleaning and looked up self-consciously. “Yes?”

Aerla grinned at him, amused with this shy side of his law-abiding nature, _he_ _was just too adorable_. “Nothing, I think your shield’s shiny enough now though.”

He ducked his head for as embarrassment coloured his voice, “It gives me something to do when people are hovering.”

That startled a laugh out of her. “Oops, I thought you were just preparing in case Stark needed a mirror.” She curtsied low. “My apologies, sir.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You need skirts to do that, and it’s Captain.”

Aerla poked her tongue out at him, acting the age she looked rather than the age she was for once. “Don’t push it.”

He laughed and she realised how easily he inspired confidence and loyalty. Howard Stark could not have used the serum on a better man, now Steve’s bravery was boosted with muscles and a shield made of a metal she had never encountered before.

An eerie cawing noise had his face falling and she followed his gaze. Stark buzzed past once more but this time he was followed by a haze of darkness.

“What- What is Stark doing out there?” she asked haltingly.

Steve sighed and rose to stand at the doorway with her, his shield held protectively in front of them both - it seemed subconscious and it charmed her. “They came through with the Chitauri, we think.”

“They’re aliens?” Aerla was aghast, her wolf eyes picking out deadly claws and beaks amongst the fluttering of wings.

“Well, they aren’t from Earth; small groups appear every now and again and go after the helicarrier with single-minded purpose.”

“What are they?”

“We don’t know; they only attack when we’re in flight so Stark’s the only one who can reach them.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Aerla murmured as she watched the Iron Man suit burst with power, blasting the small but sharp assailants.

Steve clenched his jaw and seemed to force his next words out, “They completely combust when they’re killed, not a feather remains… But Fury wants one.”

Aerla went cold; Fury was advocating maiming a creature so that they could examine it in its death throes. Steve was a terse statue at her side, whether in agreement or disgust, she wasn’t sure, but Aerla knew she hated the idea. _Torturing an animal for its secrets was wrong, regardless of their origins._ “Has Stark tried?”

“They always end up blitzed when he’s involved,” Steve replied neutrally.

She wondered whether that meant Stark was killing them on purpose or not. Stark was a scientist, a self-proclaimed knowledge fiend, would he agree with Fury’s methods? He zoomed past once more and her eyes locked on one trailing alien bird, its wings not flapping in sync.

They both tensed at the same time but Aerla had already drawn her bow and notched an arrow, sending it straight into the eye of the injured thing. It puffed into a cloud of dust that whisked away on the wind. Her arms fell to her sides and she looked at Steve, prepared to defend her right to the death if she had to, but instead he gave one commanding nod.

An old part of her preened under a superior’s examination, but a larger part of her was immensely pleased that Steve was not following all of his orders. She had been right; the Avengers were not as entwined with SHIELD as Fury might hope. _Good_ , because the director was swiftly dropping in her eyes.

“Why a bow?” he asked suddenly.

She glanced at him before returning her gaze to the slowly diminishing flock of birds. “It’s quiet, beautiful, and it reminds me of my home.”

Steve was silent as he mulled over her words so she took the opportunity to shoot another two of Stark’s dogged admirers.

“Is your home quiet and beautiful?”

Aerla sighed wistfully, the scenes before her eyes far harsher than the ones in her mind. “Yes, if you were to stand in the front door you would hear nothing but the susurration of trees, and each season is more stunning than the last.”

“That sounds peaceful.”

There was something very tired in his voice so she gave him a tiny frown, first Stark with his tame and damaged coffee clutching, and now heroic Steve was tired? “It is, maybe I’ll show you if the Avengers ever get a holiday.”

A small smile lifted his lips, only slightly erasing the weariness in his eyes. Aerla barely knew him but she knew what exhaustion looked like, it constantly lurked in her awareness. She wanted to erase it from Steve’s face though because he was far too young to be so weary. “Maybe you should book one when you renew your contract with Fury.”

He chuckled then, making her smile. “I’ll take you up on that offer if I manage it.”

“Anytime,” she found herself saying, despite having guarded her home for the past millennium. _It would never happen,_ because she was not long for this world. Steve rested one hand on her shoulder and then walked away, so she shot three more birds. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him; he was still a soldier at heart after all.

Jarvis warned her that someone was approaching the hangar so she threaded her bow back into her quiver. Steve looked at her strangely so she nodded at the opening door as Clint stepped through with a frown on his face. She hid a grimace, had SHIELD seen her disposal of Fury’s test subjects?

“Wondered where you’d got to; Stark doing okay?”

She shared a relieved glance with Steve, automatically asking his opinion on the question. He was the leader here, no matter that she was more than ten times his age. Steve quirked an eyebrow in response, seeming to ask what she thought of her fellow archer. Clint seemed a good guy, but he was a SHIELD agent, answered to Fury.

_Then again, so should Steve._

“He’s thinning the herd,” she said as Clint came to stand next to her. “What do you think of them?”

Aerla sensed Steve’s surprise at her blatant fish for information, but she was the newcomer still, could get away with questions that the rest of them couldn’t. She wanted to know what Clint’s stance was, because she liked him, didn’t want to think that he was a true minion.

“I think they’re aliens and they don’t belong here,” he replied harshly.

It was the third time today that she had heard such fatigue, this time it was vehement and bitter, the tone of someone who had experienced alien magic. Her wolf snarled at the implications, humans should not have been exposed to such threats; they were fledglings, unprepared and defenceless against magic and alien firepower.

She had to admit that they were stronger than they seemed, the Avengers were proof of that, but was it worth Stark’s flinches, Steve’s lassitude, and Clint’s haunted eyes? _No, it wasn’t,_ and it evoked the tendril of protectiveness that had reared its head when she had learnt about SHIELD’s on-going battles.

None of this was supposed to happen, she hadn’t planned on empathising with the Avengers, and the Avengers should never have had to defend their planet. But if they hadn’t, she wouldn’t be one step closer to finding out about her heritage. She wanted to snap at the god that had abandoned Earth so long ago and left them to fight enemies they shouldn’t have encountered for millennia.

“You okay?”

Aerla blinked away the difficult thoughts to see Clint’s frown and Steve’s concerned approach on her left. They had no idea what she was, that she had powers they despised and didn’t understand, and yet they ignored their own anxieties to check on her.

This was why she would help the Avengers, why she could put off her quest until push came to shove. Because humans, for all their faults, stubbornness, and small-dog syndrome, were ultimately persistent and self-sacrificing, they understood that a weak link just meant you needed to shore up the defences, not break the chain. “Yeah, thanks, I just wish I had wings.”

They both smiled through their tiredness and Steve stepped a little closer to the open door. “We all have weaknesses.”

It was a damning statement and only served to encourage her decision to help them. She might not know anything about the magic she was born with, but she knew how to track it. If something of its kind threatened Earth whilst she was there, she would find a way to destroy it, because she was a human too, in the beginning.

 

* * *

 

Tony grumbled when another set of claws screeched along his leg plate. He twisted to blast it off and righted himself before he could watch it explode into dust. There were less in the pack than there had been a few minutes ago. _  
_

As long as Fury wasn’t capturing them, Tony was happy, because he’d be damned if he let SHIELD capture anymore creatures. Bruce hid it well, but he could tell that his friend was getting twitchy. They had been so close to telling Fury to screw himself but then Hydra had shown up. Loki had been gone for two whole weeks and yet they were still trapped on the helicarrier; _this should be SHIELD's job, not mine._

He turned and sent a few more birds to whatever Hell aliens came from. There were definitely less. “Jarvis, rearrange the thrusters so I can fly backwards.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tony tried to concentrate on the flurry of feathers by his feet but hearing his AI talk just reminded him of the kid that had stolen his ear piece. The only reason he had let it go was because Bruce had pointed out how young she was and laughed at his anger. _What was Fury thinking letting her on board?_ He had enjoyed messing with her, her reaction proving that she couldn’t handle him and therefore didn’t belong. If he tried that shit with Natasha she threatened to castrate him, it was what made her so attractive.

He jerked to the side when dust exploded in front of him, he hadn’t caused it. “Jarvis-“

“It would appear that someone is aiding you from the hangar, sir.”

Frowning, he flipped the thrusters back around and pulled his pursuers back towards the open bay door. Two figures stood at the edge, one in an annoyingly familiar star-studded outfit, and the other a blonde mystery. He heard two more bursts from behind him and focused his sights on a wooden bow that fell to her side.

The kid was helping him. With grudging admiration he realised that she was a good shot too, he was moving pretty fast. He wondered whether Cap had told her about Fury’s missive, presumably not if she was shooting to kill right next to him. His father’s experiment was good to the bone, would probably hold fire in his bare hands if Fury asked him to.

“How many left, Jarvis?”

“A dozen, sir.”

Tony flared his palms to take out another two and activated some rockets to dispose of a few more. He might hate being called upon to help out on such mundane matters, but at least it gave him a chance to get away, and it stopped Fury from bitching at him to make Tesseract weapons.

Really, what was he still doing there? He had things to do, Pepper to get back to; he should just pack Jarvis and his suits up and leave. Stark Industries didn’t need him but he had projects to work on, his arc reactor to improve. Pepper still hadn’t forgiven him for taking the nuke through the portal, but at least his being with SHIELD kept her from booking him to appear at boring parties. She was vindictive that way.

He aimed a hand at an approaching creature but it puffed away before he could focus on it, the kid was still helping him then. Two more of her arrows found their marks and he finished the stragglers off with a multi-burst laser. Tony sighed, he didn’t want to go back in just yet, he was enjoying the faux-freedom he felt at being outside. He managed to waste another five minutes before Jarvis reprimanded him.

“Sir?”

“Yeah, I know, I’m going.”

Only Steve was in the hangar when he touched down and Jarvis closed the door behind him. Cap didn’t notice, not many people did, but Aerla had picked up on his AI as soon as she encountered him. She was surprisingly perceptive but seemed to have formed an attachment to Jarvis; it would keep his infiltration a secret for a bit longer at least.

“Any survivors?” Cap asked as he opened his helmet up.

“No.” Tony frowned, they had both been watching him, and Steve must have seen the intent in his shots. He didn’t bother hiding it anymore, no one else could obliterate as many of the birds as he could, SHIELD needed him.

“Unfortunate.” Was that a smile on Cap’s face? What had Aerla and he been talking about for the soldier to finally disobey Fury?

Tony shrugged, not wanting to think about it, they could all screw themselves until he had taken a long, well-deserved holiday. Cap clapped him on the shoulder and walked away, leaving Tony staring after him. _What the fuck had just happened?_ Steve never did that to him, Tony had cultivated a ‘back-the-fuck-off’ aura a long time ago.

Still frowning, he activated the hangar’s wall compartment and had Jarvis take off his suit. It needed fixing up and repainting, but it would have to wait until he was back in Stark tower. When the wall slotted back into place again he checked on Jarvis’s power core. It was hidden safely behind layers of metal and glass, protected by his suit and various levels of screening.

He headed back to the control room, content that everything was in place. Jarvis was slowly permeating every single aspect of the ship; soon everything SHIELD knew, Tony would know too. It was the one thing that was keeping him on board.

“Everything go okay?”

Bruce’s concern was palpable and it made Tony want to roll his eyes as he drawled in response, “Yes, dear.”

The room was empty but for the two of them, just the way he liked it. Bruce was the only one he could stomach for an extended amount of time, and that was only because they understood each other, and his fellow scientist was quiet. Well, quiet when he wasn’t a huge green rage monster, and he still wanted to analyse that.

Making a beeline for his coffee maker he saw that a fresh batch had been made, two mugs already set up next to it. He called over his shoulder, “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Aerla made it.”

Tony paused with his lips on the rim but decided that Bruce wouldn’t let her poison him. He took a tentative sip as he rummaged in the cupboard and found that she made decent coffee for a Brit.

Where the Hell was his spare mug?

 

* * *

 

Aerla decided that red wasn’t a terrible colour; it was quite bright and encouraging in comparison to the grey walls. It was almost as enthusing as the fresh bite of hot tea that she was savouring in her new favourite mug.

“How do you make such a great cup of tea, Jarvis?”

“It is a science, ma’am.”

She laughed out loud, delighted with the almost pleased note in his voice. “You have perfected it then, because this is glorious.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Smiling, she tipped her head back against her bed’s headboard; today had been a good day. She had been given important information, not a lot, but enough to convince her that coming to SHIELD was more than just a useful move towards the stars. Meeting Jarvis was one of the most fascinating things she had experienced in a long time, especially when she could swear she could hear emotion in the AI’s voice.

Even Stark couldn’t sour her happy mood, with his grumpy attitude and mocking glints in his eyes. The inventor was a cocky bastard, but he was intelligent enough to warrant some of it, and he _was_ killing the alien birds. Although he seemed healthy enough, there didn’t seem to be a reason for Banner to pull the mental trauma card.

Aerla tilted her head at the ceiling, wondering whether Jarvis would talk about his creator. The questions were on the tip of her tongue but something held her back, because she felt as if she would disappoint the AI if she asked. It was madness, she knew that, he was a computer program, but still she couldn’t bring herself to broach what she saw as the trust between them.

She was getting soft in her old age.

Thinking about her day made her realise that it had been over twenty-four hours since she had last eaten. Hunger had never been a driving force in her life, a fact that she was grateful for since she would have perished a lot earlier if it had been. Food was remarkably hard to come by when you were being hunted.

It would seem strange if she didn’t eat something soon though, so she roused herself, smiling at the mug in her hand. She wondered whether Stark had even noticed her theft yet, or whether he was plotting her demise at that very moment. She hadn’t been able to help herself when she had returned to the control room to collect her forgotten suit.

Banner had smiled at her so she had stayed to update him. The doctor had given almost nothing away when she had said that the wave had been eliminated, but she had seen the minute relaxation in his shoulders. He would understand why she had ensured they all died, because he harboured something that interested SHIELD too.

Aerla was secretly fascinated by the man and wanted to see his other half. Phil had said that Banner couldn’t control it, that a stray emotion could cause him to change. She knew what that felt like, but she had learnt control eventually, maybe he had as well. That didn’t mean she was going to reveal her secret any time soon, Banner had smarts and Stark to back him up, Aerla would have to run for the valleys.

Banner had been telling her about why the helicarrier’s defences didn’t work against the tiny birds and she had spied the now cold coffee on the counter where she had left her suit. Remembering what had transpired at that exact spot, she had decided to engage in a little mischief. Besides, she would need a cup if she was to hang around, so she might as well carry on stealing Stark’s stuff.

Hilariously, Jarvis gently chided her, “Are you going to return Mr Stark’s mug now that you are finished with it, ma’am?”

“Nope,” she replied as she idly stroked her ear piece; it was a strange presence in her ear, but not unpleasant. “Do you think he’ll mind?”

“It is hard to say, Mr Stark does not often have his things taken from him.”

“Then it’s time he learnt.” She smiled at the silence that followed, wanted to think that she just couldn’t hear the ‘indeed’ that she imagined the AI would say.

Before she had come to SHIELD, she had thought that whilst she didn’t know everything, she knew quite a lot. The Avengers were proving her incredibly wrong, and she was actually enjoying it. They hadn’t quite shaken centuries of ennui, but they had certainly opened her eyes to a world she thought she had been tiring of.

She would be leaving Earth in good hands once she had corralled an errant god - whenever he decided to show up.


	6. Bets and Bettas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint’s bow twanged a mere millisecond after hers, and Stark slammed on his brakes to aim a blast at the last angry entity. Their arrows disappeared in an arc reactor-fuelled glow and only ashes signalled the target’s demise.

>   
> “Do you think it will truly come to battle between them? If they should come to some accord—”
> 
> “They won’t,” Tyrion said. “They are too different and yet too much alike, and neither could ever stomach the other.”
> 
> -       George R. R. Martin, _'A Clash of Kings'_

 

Aerla hit the floor on her hands and knees and bit back a curse. It had been so long since she hadn’t slept in her four-poster that she had rolled straight out of her new tiny bed. Cold metal and the faint rumble of motors met her sleepy senses and she grumbled into the silence.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

Her wolf sprang at the invisible voice but Aerla felt immensely soothed at hearing the calming tone. “Fine, thank you, Jarvis.”

Change was something someone with a millennium under her belt started to ignore after a while, and the blossoming bruises on her palms were testament to that. She sat back on her calves and resisted the urge to lick the pain. It was becoming so very difficult not to shift, especially when cramps creased her arms and she could see the dawn out of her window.

If she had been at home she would have escaped over her balcony and trotted through the dew, half-heartedly chased a rabbit before racing a horse back to the house. Instead, she was in a box of a room with cameras and sensors so high-tech that if her heart skipped a beat they would probably notice.

“Would you like me to make you a cup of tea, ma’am?”

“Jarvis, you are amazing, yes please.” Aerla ran a hand through her ruffled hair and cast about for the tie; there was no point in going back to sleep now, even if it was far too early. She strolled to the window and threaded her hair into a French plait, pulling the strands tight as she drooled over the thought of hot tea.

Halfway through the knot, she frowned at the sun-streaked clouds and regarded a strange flicker on the horizon; something dark and fuzzy that may or may not have been growing larger. Her nose bumped the cold glass. “Jarvis, what’s that?”

“What is what, ma’am?”

“That hazy smudge out of my window, nor’eastern. Are there any planes nearby?”

“There are none currently in our airspace.”

If she hadn’t been so troubled by the possibilities, she would have been impressed at how proficient Jarvis was. _Was Stark in the satellites, too?_ “Keep a weather eye, Jarvis, but I’ll take that tea if it’s alright with you, I like to start the day right.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Aerla gave the disconcerting speck one last look before retrieving the red mug and warming her fingers with it. The smell was just perfect enough to remind her of home and she closed her eyes against the sickness. _It had been so long…_

“Finish your tea whilst you can, ma’am.”

“Crap.” She sipped her tea and moved back to the swiftly lighting glass, shading her eyes against the dawn to see the black dot had grown into a blur. The taste on her tongue was pleasant, but concern overshadowed it. “Is it the birds?”

“It appears so, more than usual.”

“Have you told Stark?”

“I am doing so, ma’am.”

She hummed in assent and watched the clouds with a puckered brow. Stark was good at what he did, but there was no reason she couldn’t help him out. She shouldered her quiver with one hand and continued to drink with the other. Nothing would get between Aerla and her morning tea, especially not a horde of creepy alien birds.

“Jarvis, can you patch me through to Clint, please?” She drained her cup in the silence before hearing a click and then a very grumpy grunt. “Rise and shine, I need a hand.”

“What do you need?”

“Bring your bow to the hangar; tell no one, this message will combust in three seconds.”

“You’re such a lose-“

Aerla clicked her ear piece and snickered; there was no need for her and Stark to be the only ones up at this ungodly hour. Her door opened as she faced it and she murmured a thank you to Jarvis. The corridors were mostly empty but the night crew were still active in the bridge as she passed through, a few of them even nodding at her.

The bay door was already open when she stepped into the hangar and saw the back of the Iron Man suit. Stark turned and hesitated briefly when he saw her so she brandished her bow to indicate he wouldn’t be on his own today. He nodded once and then he was gone in a blur of red and gold, her breath catching when he stepped into the open air.

Aerla had long life and regeneration, but she couldn’t fly. She was earth- and Earth- bound, each a decidedly cruel reminder of the other. As a youngster she had dreamed of wings, feathers instead of fur, and then technology had advanced enough to put even regular humans in the sky.

The toes of her boots reached the very edge of the hangar and she regarded a cloudy descent that would definitely kill her. It wasn’t often she was confronted with that fact, and it was only mildly terrifying now. The rushing vertigo tinged with fear ebbed when she felt familiar movement at her back. “Sleep well?”

“I will push you out if you’re fucking chirpy.”

The grouchy archer came to stand at her side, his hair was scruffy and he blinked tiredly at her. If she hadn’t woken up by almost face-flooring, she would probably react the same way; she thought the dawn was pretty, but dusk was better. “You can’t set me up for bird jokes like that.”

Humour gleamed through his weariness and made his eyes crinkle. “Just try it, you’ll find your wings sooner than I will.”

Aerla laughed and let contentment settle in her stomach. She might be about to take pot-shots at aliens, but she had woken up to hot tea and a new day, and was readying her arrows with a comrade by her side. It wasn’t often enough that she had days like these.

Clint snapped his compound easily into place right in front of her and peered over with a smug smile. She levelled an unamused look at him and took her time limbering her own bow. “You are such an ass.”

“I came all the way here for you, and you call me nasty names?”

“You deserve it, Cupcake,” she said with a smile as she notched an arrow and followed Stark’s figure-of-eight. His suit was bright against the clouds and reflected the dawning light as he waited for the birds to arrive. Aerla speculated what would have happened if she hadn’t seen them coming, would he have fallen out of bed to defend the carrier and no one else would have noticed? _That seemed a bit unfair_. “Heads up.”

The first bird came soaring around the corner and she felt Clint’s good humour drop. Aerla could have predicted that, but then something salty and bitter – fear – eked out from him and she remembered what he had gone through; Loki had ridden his mind and the Chitauri had almost levelled New York. Perhaps exposing another set of aliens to Clint was not such a good idea, after all.

She nudged his shoulder with hers. “Challenge?”

Whether it was the physical contact or the joke, maybe both, he lightened and took a steadying breath. “You’re on.”

 _Good man._ “What’s your stake, Cake?”

“I have alcohol, you?”

“Alcohol is acceptable.” She released the first arrow, sending the lead bird into the abyss. Grinning when Clint grimaced and quickly took aim, she downed a second and watched Stark herd the rest. Something sizzling left his suit and burst the throng, causing Clint to curse as he lost his target.

“Do you think that counts as one?” Aerla muttered to her side but then her ear piece clicked and Stark spoke.

“It’s no oliphaunt, I’m counting it as at least seven.”

She barked a laugh and wondered how long he had been listening for. “You’re not involved, you have explosives and everything.”

“Jealous?”

She was getting tired of that word. “No, you’re the short one; we’ll just toss you off board.”

Clint chuckled. “You have a beard and everything, Stark, it’s perfect.”

“I guess that means you can’t be Legolas anymore, Barton.”

Aerla was pleased at Stark’s observation and gave a little bow to Clint’s pout. “Aragorn could use a bow, Cupcake, don’t be sad.”

Stark’s offended reply declared before Clint could respond, “Er, I’m the lone ranger, here.”

She snorted at the self-obsessed observation; Stark _would_ see himself as the rightful king. “I don’t know, Glow; a red suit, a lot of fire power, and hoards of cash… Hey, you can be Smaug.”

They both smirked and Stark sounded through her ear piece, “I am surprisingly alright with that.”

“You would be.” She finished off an injured bird; not risking anything else when there had been so many fluttering around. Only one remained but it didn’t flee against their onslaught, commendable but stupid. “Race.”

Clint’s bow twanged a mere millisecond after hers, and Stark slammed on his brakes to aim a blast at the last angry alien. Their arrows disappeared in an arc reactor-fuelled glow and only ashes signalled the target’s demise.

“Mine,” she called out and dodged Clint’s responding push. Laughing as she threaded her bow back into her quiver, she pulled him stumbling back against her when Stark landed right next to them.

His helmet flicked back and she finally saw him in his suit for the first time, she found it strange to see his face surrounded by the red metal after seeing him out of it.

“Yeah, right,” he said as he walked past a bristling Clint. There was some animosity in the air between them but she couldn’t pinpoint the reason; _Stark had flown in rather close when he landed but had he done it on purpose?_ Aerla wouldn’t put it past the arrogant man to try and annoy her fellow archer, the question was why.

“Nice work, boys.” She pointed a finger at Clint. “You owe me alcohol.”

“Fine, I’ll go get it.”

He threw one last glare at Stark and then stomped off, so she called after him, “I’ll be in the control room.”

“Will you?” Stark enquired without looking at her as he touched the hangar side.

“It seems to be the place-“ She halted when the entire wall parted to reveal an empty glass enclosure and numerous metal arms. _By the stars_ , she knew Stark had Jarvis on board, but this was beyond her. Robotic limbs reached out to pluck and unscrew the metal parts, pulling them back into the wall and forming the suit within the glass. “Is Jarvis doing that?”

“Yeah.”

“Jarvis, you are so amazing.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he responded from an overhead speaker and Stark raised an eyebrow at her. When the final piece was removed he stretched out his arms and turned back to her, but she was still staring at his suit.

“How quickly can you get it back on?” She wondered how much time he wasted by placing each bit individually. Jarvis had been fast, but not rampaging-aliens-we’re-all-about-die fast. What if Stark was in a different part of the ship and all the doors were locked, could he get all of the way here in time?

“I have my ways,” he hinted slyly, and stepped in front of her vision as the wall closed up behind him. Aerla scowled, wanting to see more, and a glint of humour lit his perceptive eyes.

She fixed the cocky man with an enquiring stare. “Does Fury know you’re messing with his ship?”

He answered her question when the glint disappeared and his stubbled jaw set. “You planning on telling him?”

“Nope, Jarvis and I get on, just curious.”

Stark's forehead jerked and then he relaxed. He still seemed tired, but appeared to be more intrigued than anything else. It didn’t bother her that he was up to mischief; Hell, SHIELD needed a bit of a shake-up at this rate. Besides, she liked Jarvis, he was useful and amazing and he fascinated her, she didn’t want to get rid of him any time soon.

Stark was still staring so she deliberately shifted impatiently towards the door. When Stark moved, so did she, and they strode in silence to the control room. Banner was working inside and did a double-take when he saw the two of them together.

Aerla was just as surprised that they weren’t at each other’s throats yet. “Morning, doc. You’re up early.”

“As are you, I don’t normally see anyone for a few hours yet.”

His confusion confirmed a theory; no one else on the ship knew what Stark was up to. It didn’t sit right with her that one of their own was out defending them and they didn’t even notice. What sort of an operation were SHIELD running where they couldn’t even see- _Wait_ , was Jarvis doing that? Was Stark deliberately blocking the sensors so that no one would see?

Aerla wasn’t sure whether to admire his tenacity or punch him for being a self-sacrificing idiot. If he wanted to flit about SHIELD’s mainframes, fair enough, she figured they probably owed him, but keeping such a tight rein on the information was foolish. Stark wasn’t the type to ask for help, so if something went wrong, would anyone know?

She absent-mindedly wandered over to the closest counter and it turned out to be the one she had sat on before. _I like this one, it’s familiar now._ Hopping up onto it revealed the two scientists staring at her. “What?”

Stark didn’t seem affected by her question but Banner hedged, “Would you like a drink?” He acted uneasy, as if he wasn’t sure how to deal with her being there. Was she the first person that had happily infiltrated their calm little space? She rather liked that.

Aerla brightened and braced her hands behind her. “I would love one.”

“Where’s your mug?” Stark asked and she replied without thinking.

“In my room-“ She stopped as the word was halfway out of her mouth and looked guiltily at him. His lip twitched and one brow raised as Banner snorted at her expression.

“Would you like tea, ma’am?”

“Yes, please, Jarvis,” Aerla mumbled quickly, grateful for the reprieve as she scooted off the counter to fetch the wayward mug. She almost bumped into Clint in her rush out of the door and they reflexively sidestepped each other. She matched his grin and said, “Apologies.”

“It’s fine, here’s your winnings.”

“Thanks, Cupcake, we’ll break it-“ Something skyward and far away itched her magic and she broke off with her hand wrapped around the bottle. Her head tilted to the side and she listened to her wolf’s warning growl. Clint faded out of view and she marched back into the control room. “Jarvis, can you show me the view out of my window, please?”

The three men stiffened. Banner shared a significant glance with Stark who shrugged, but Clint frowned at how quickly the screens appeared. She ignored them because her magic had never reacted that way before, not in such a wary prickling. Closing in on the screen as Clint and Stark flanked her sides, they all stared intently at the picture of sunny clouds.

“What can you see?” Clint queried as he crossed his arms.

“There’s nothing there,” Stark stated and sauntered away. Teeth snapped under her skin, agitated at the itch and angry at the dismissal.

Aerla scoured the screen, mentally conversing with her magic and trying to identify the strange sensation. A black dot finally came into view and she reached back to pull Clint’s ridiculously large bicep closer. “What do your hawk eyes see?”

“The same thing you saw this morning?”

“Yes, but you need to identify it for yourself if I’m not around.” _When_ I’m not around, she thought, and that was okay because Hawkeye was almost as good as she was. Clint had accepted her hunch when Stark hadn’t, had trusted her judgement when he knew nothing about her; they were of a similar breed after all, he must have seen that too.

Banner came to squint next to her. “I can’t see anything.”

“Archers’ eyes,” they both murmured in reply and shared an amused smile. Aerla jolted when the discomfort irritated her magic again but waited for Clint to point at the speck. Later, someone would realise that she had sought the camera out before the threat was even visible, but for now she needed to know what the Hell was bothering her so much.

“Do I have time for a coffee?” Stark sounded so bored that she wanted to throw something at him, possibly a sharp something if there was one to hand.

“No,” Aerla replied quietly, hiding a flinch as the feeling increased. “This is going to take more than just you, Glow.”

Clint clicked his neck in anticipation. “You think there’s more?”

Paws scratched at the itch beneath her skin, trying to alleviate the annoying presence. It was not something she recognised but it made her think of feathers and space rock. Interest became a tiny rush of excitement, she might be indifferent to change but learning something new was always enthralling. Magic ran in her veins and the opportunity to discover more about it outshone any potential danger.

Aerla’s wolf rolled against the strange presence to analyse it. There was nothing cultivated about it, there was no intelligence or anything remotely humanoid about it. It didn’t entice her like the lingering starlight did, it was foreign. She hadn’t felt anything with the other packs; if it was the alien birds, something was different about them. “Yes.”

Clint nodded at her and left the room, all seriousness and SHIELD agent, appreciating her knowledge for all he thought it was guesswork. This trust was what she had missed by closing herself off from humans, but it was dangerous. She didn’t know any of them, and they didn’t know her, and friendships were always a risk; she needed to remember that, _because things were different now._

Modernity would do more than irk her magic, it could decipher her secrets.

Banner sought her confirmation on the dot’s advancement but Stark changed the screen before they could inspect it, suddenly seeing through a new camera that showed the helicarrier from above. Aerla tilted her head at the picture. “Is this satellite?”

“Maybe.” Stark glinted when she narrowed her eyes at him.

She still wanted to throw something at him, but he seemed to be in a good mood and she wanted to take advantage of it, so Aerla mimicked his teasing attitude. “Come on then, boy wonder, show me some skills.”

“You couldn’t handle my skills.”

“I’ve handled wild animals,” She prowled over to where his hands were whirling above the counter. ”You’re just a kitten.”

He looked up and almost smirked. “Roar.”

 _Stark was quite funny when he wasn’t being an ass,_ and she found that she quite enjoyed trying to lighten his cool façade. She followed his gaze to the counter top where flurries of movement and blue lines confused her until she wrapped her head around what he was doing. “You’re patching in to other cameras to get a better view?”

She didn’t hold back how impressed she was, Stark was a wizard and Jarvis, his magic. She could sense his smugness, _arrogant man_ , but then he abruptly stared over her shoulder. “Whoa, that’s big.”

She turned to see a grainy picture covering one wall, a still that showed a horde of the alien birds surrounding a far larger one. Well, it made sense as to why her magic reacted so strongly, that thing was huge. Aerla stalked towards the screen and brought a hand up to encourage it to move. Jarvis must have interpreted because it began to shift, a wingspan that was at least twice her size flapped amongst its swarm. “At least we know more about them.”

Banner stood next to her again. “What do you mean?”

“They must be nesting somewhere, breeding, and that's an older one. May I have a size comparison, Jarvis?”

The largest bird was isolated and placed on a white background next to a silhouette of a person. In comparison the thing was half the size taller but five-times the width. The shadowed figure however was feminine and had a quiver on its back; it was her. “Wow, I feel really short. Quick, Glow, come over here so I feel better.”

Banner smiled and Aerla glanced over her shoulder to see the glowering inventor fiddling with his technology. The bird moved off to the side and a second silhouette appeared next to hers, it was masculine and a good inch or two shorter. Aerla was about to laugh but then it squared off and grew taller. “Wearing your suit doesn’t count, that’s cheating.”

“It’s called firepower.”

“It’s called compensating, actually,” she drawled as Clint walked back into the room with the Black Widow in tow. Aerla rolled her eyes at the former and nodded at the latter. Romanova still served to make her uncomfortable, but with an alien itching her magic and Clint by her side, Aerla could ignore it. The woman stood on his left and it made her idly question how close the two were, they were comrades in arms and emotions were always high on the battlefield.

“They make pills for that now, Stark,” Clint taunted as he returned to Aerla’s flank and observed the screen. She watched the two agents examine the information as Stark’s silhouette disappeared with amusing swiftness. Romanova studied weak points on the bird’s anatomy whilst Clint scanned his quiver. They suited each other, both deadly and driven, but where she would already trust one at her back, the other was too reminiscent of her nickname.

Steve appeared in the doorway, freshly showered but not in his suit. He must have already been up because Stark was the only one that still seemed tired. “What are we dealing with?”

Clint and Banner turned to her so she stepped back and shook her head. Aerla might know the exact direction the threat was coming from but she didn’t want to lead, not when her magic was still a secret. There was an eager creature in her chest, wanting to chase and tear into feathered flesh, champing at the bit for being captive for so long.

Stark saved her from the silence. “They’re bigger than before, that one’s the size of a sedan.”

“Too big?” Steve asked carefully, wary of offending him.

Aerla winced, Stark would never admit to that. “It’s not worth the risk to the helicarrier.” She remarked as she went back to the counter. “Can you lead them somewhere else, Glow, where we can get at them?”

He watched her for a second and then shrugged in agreement. She wondered whether he paused because she knew about Jarvis, or maybe he could tell that she didn’t give a shit about the helicarrier. She’d _ride_ one of the damn aliens if it kept Stark from going against them alone.

Clint conferred with Romanova and then looked over at them. “If you can take them down to the ground, we’ll follow.”

Aerla immediately understood that the female agent was the senior of the two. Assassin’s eyes locked with hers and a Russian accent made everything sound lethal, “We can take the quinjet.”

Something very treacherous whispered in those cold blue orbs and Aerla instinctively matched stare for stare. Aerla wasn’t intimidated; she had been born in the shadows of a fat-fuelled fire, a bloodied hunter that roamed the night. There might be something ancient in the art Romanova used so well, but Aerla _was_ ancient, and she gloried in it when her wolf stood her ground with a toothy smile.

Steve marched obliviously in between them and it broke the perilous tension, allowing Aerla to turn her grin on Stark’s raised eyebrow. He had noticed the interaction and it made her want to laugh, because he had stopped regarding her like she was defenceless. Had he thought she would look away first and offer her throat to the assassin?

Romanova might be poison, but Aerla was the claws, and not one thing on this helicarrier could track her if she didn’t want it to. She took a step towards Stark and showed more teeth, letting her predator nature peek through for the first time in weeks. “Suit up, Glow. There are monsters afoot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and reckless toothiness, are all mine.


	7. Feathers and Ferrous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerla curled her hesitant hand and punched him in the bicep, grinning when he slowly realised she had knuckled the muscle. He pouted and grumbled, “If I can’t shoot, I’m going to end you.”

>   
> “The tyrant is a child of Pride  
> Who drinks from his sickening cup  
> Recklessness and vanity,  
> Until from his high crest headlong  
> He plummets to the dust of hope.”
> 
> -       Sophocles, _'Oedipus Rex'_

 

“Curse it, brother. Just confess!”

“To what end, pray? That I should dance for the court and tell them that I am sorry?” Loki sneered elegantly and wondered when Thor had become so thick-headed. Or, perhaps, he had always been that way and he just had not cared to acknowledge it.

Still, he found it rather amusing to watch Thor agitatedly pace around the outside of his cell. He had been doing so for a while and Loki half-expected the floor to suddenly give way under the restless stride. All the while he would remain standing in his protected golden prison and probably tut disdainfully at the mess.

Only a scant few weeks had passed since their return from Midgard, enough time for him to despise the very ground he idled upon, but not enough time for his sentence to pass. He assumed it was the Queen that kept the Allfather from calling the court to session, but he was beginning to tire of Thor’s incessant visits.

“So that you may have a chance of recovering and live in our wing once more.”

Loki barked a short laugh that made Thor wince. “That wing is for Odin’s sons, and I am not.”

“Do not be pedantic; you know that is not true.” The golden forehead crossed and cleared as he stared beseechingly. “Heimdall’s account will only delay your sentence, not absolve you of blame.”

It had surprised Loki more than anyone when the gatekeeper had been summoned from his post, but only to state that his eye had not been turned to Midgard and so had seen nothing. The Allfather had not been pleased with that liberating recount, but Loki had been incredulous.

He had always been sceptical of the all-seeing eye, the one under the King’s command but existed almost outside of the hierarchy. Loki had spent his childhood committing various treacheries and yet Heimdall had never alerted anyone, despite surely seeing most of them.

He had long since perfected the spell to hide himself from even that long-reaching gaze; yet it would seem that it was not known to anyone besides the two of them.

“Heimdall’s words are as obscure to me as they are to you, but do not think that we remained unwatched whilst on Midgard.”

“Brother-“

The writhing anger he had been tamping down so well surged at that inane term and he whirled to the glass. “Do not call me thus, neither brother nor prince, for am I beyond that now. There is nothing you can do for me, begone.”

Thor’s brow softened in the sickening way it always did when he felt hard done by, and he took a step closer to the magically reinforced walls. “Loki, you will always be my brother.”

Rolling his eyes and heaving an exasperated sigh did nothing to sway Thor from his pleading stance, so he called upon his constrained powers to blanket the glass in darkness, hiding them from each other’s sight.

Persistence, however, was decidedly not a virtue.

“You know where I will be, if you need me,” Thor’s voice was sad and it only hardened his bitter resolve.

“Yes, in _your wing_.”

Loki knew that if he could see past the black he would see a flinching spine, but he was far too busy working on his escape plan to care. When he finally pulled the screen down it was to see only one beady eye focused on him from the far wall.

“Munin, what memories have you?” He strolled to the barely discernable edge to watch the stilled crow. He had not considered his stars lucky at Heimdall’s testimony, for Odin’s watchers were everywhere; and at least he knew what side the crows stood on, even if it was against him.

He turned his back on the rustling feathers and closed his eyes to concentrate. _Just a little more time…_  

 

* * *

 

The Avengers traipsed outside and Aerla took her first breath of fresh air in over two weeks, and it was _glorious_. She just barely restrained the urge to skip with joy; the sun was warmth across her skin and Banner gave her one of his tiny smiles.

She wondered whether he felt as absolutely free as she did, but when he held back with a sigh she realised he wasn’t joining them below. He took off his glasses and watched her from under his brows as the others walked on, already forgetting him. She needed to soothe his apparent discomfort and bumped him with her hand. “Why?”

“I’m not needed; I’ll just make a mess.”

He sounded regretful and she knew it wasn’t because he did not get to join in, but because they were going into danger and he felt helpless. Aerla opened her mouth to discuss creatures and control but then Clint called her name and she remembered where she was. SHIELD, present day, _things had to be different now_.

Her wolf whined in her chest, not understanding the need for secrets when the man in front of her seemed so remorseful, when she might be able to help him. Banner had no need to be contrite, if he was always on the edge he _was_ dangerous, but that didn’t necessarily make him a liability.

Aerla warred with herself, utterly at odds after a millennium of single-minded tracking. She was so close to revealing something she knew she shouldn’t when a burst of starlight had her breathing deeply and then grimacing at the bitterness that overpowered it. Stilling like a predator on the trail she lifted her nose to follow the scent, only slightly surprised when it came from the quinjet. _A god had sat aboard that plane: Loki._

Clint jerked his head at the strange-looking aircraft and Banner shifted uneasily, saying, “Go on.”

She held up a finger in Clint’s direction, trying to ignore the lure of magic to focus on the disappointed doctor. Banner turned away so she laid her fingers on his arm, centuries of being in control taking pity on him. He was not fully trusted and she empathised with that, it made her friendlier than perhaps she should be. “Stay in contact, we might need you.”

He paused and gave her look filled with a healthy amount of surprise. Trying to curb her almost commanding overtures, she tilted her head and glanced away. Aerla might be planning on literally jumping ship when Thor returned, but she would help out where she could, especially when it came to this quiet man who contained such conflicting energies.

Her magic itched uncomfortably, so she squeezed his arm and waited for him to smile.

“Be good,” he entreated, startling her into a laugh. That request had been made to her many times in the past, and yet she was always far more concerned about their welfare than her own.

She turned and trotted towards a disgruntled Clint, each step towards him had her half wanting to run in the opposite direction. The alien birds’ presence was negligible when compared to the bitter energy practically dripping off of the aircraft; the Tesseract had been here, very recently if the strength of the power was any indication. She lost the faint scent of starlight under its onslaught and smothered the urge to growl.

Had the Asgardians looked in reluctant awe at this strange metal flying machine as she did now? At least she understood technology, even if this contraption looked far more complicated than anything she had flown in before. Clint angrily gestured at it. “Are you getting in or not?”

She hovered with her fingers almost brushing peculiar steel, her wolf trembling in distaste. “How does it work?”

“This isn’t science time, get the fuck in.”

Aerla curled her hesitant hand and punched him in the bicep, grinning when he slowly realised she had knuckled the muscle. He pouted and grumbled, “If I can’t shoot, I’m going to end you.”

“How, if you can’t shoot?” she quipped as she hopped into the jet, pretending that she wasn’t almost retching at the overpowering Tesseract energy. She sorely wanted to ask what had happened here but nausea kept her quiet as she chose a seat behind Clint’s.

He and Romanova piloted the SHIELD craft whilst Steve strapped himself into the chair next to her. Aerla wanted to explore and run her nose over every inch of the inside, desperate to find more of the starlight and to convince herself that nothing dangerous was on board.

Her world swayed and then she watched the helicarrier withdraw as they took off, Stark appearing in their sights as he zoomed ahead of them. Her ear piece clicked and she noticed Steve fiddle with his, frowning with the confusion of someone who hadn’t come to terms with present tech. Aerla leant over and rotated it gently until it fit, smirking when he winced at Stark’s sudden voice.

“Daddy brought the kids.”

Steve smiled at her gratefully before clicking into the communal line. “Take them down, Stark.”

“Where do you want ‘em?” he replied and a thought occurred to her.

“Where are we?”

“Above Manhattan,” Clint answered as he angled the jet downwards and she saw skyscrapers. Poor New York, always bearing the brunt of supernatural bullshit. Still, at least they were used to it by now, knowing SHIELD they probably had evacuation methods in place.

“I’ve lost some, hurry up,” Stark urged and the jet picked up speed.

Flight was an excitement in her feet and she gripped onto the straps that held her safely into place. She leaned forward to watch over Clint’s shoulder, listening to his and Romanova’s murmured conversation about heights and projectiles.

She watched the radar as they closed in on a SHIELD-white target, her muscles taut with expectation and readiness. They turned the corner too slowly, her eagerness making time crawl by. Red, gold, and arc reactor blue met her eyes, and she saw a multitude of enemies against one Avenger. The big one wasn’t there, but the itching let her know it was close by.

She stood and rested her hands on the two pilots’ seats, needing to touch the floor and help Stark. Old urges reasserted themselves when she saw mortals against the odds, and these odds were outlandish. It made her feel ever more responsible, because it was magic that had brought them through; alien might that had forced the Avengers together in the first place. “I’m going down.”

“Yeah?” Clint murmured as he blasted a few flying entities that took interest in them.

 “Another foot on the ground, I’ll ping you if I need anything.”

“Stay in contact,” Steve ordered, eerily echoing her earlier encouragement to Banner. “We’ll search for the others.”

She nodded and launched out of the opening door before they could land, crouching to absorb the impact from the three metre drop. Something rippled in the air and soared in her veins, a rekindled battle excitement at the thick scents of blood and ash, fantastically different from the bitter quinjet.

Aerla already had her bow ready and an arrow notched and took a second to choose a target. One larger bird advanced on Stark but he was preoccupied with a few smaller ones; she loosed the first arrow with earth finally under her feet and took it down in one. _Oh_ , how she had missed this.

“About time, Barton,” Stark drawled, turning leisurely and halting when he saw her. In that moment of surprise she shot two more aliens that swooped above his head. In reality it was a paltry fight, creepy birds notwithstanding.

“You’re welcome, Glow.” She grinned and took a deep breath of the warm air, exulting in tarmac and combat as she skipped towards him. He looked her up and down as if to say _‘seriously, how old are you?’_  But she ignored him and tapped his chest with her bow. “Iron Man suit in action?”

“Welcome to the streets, kid,” he said through the gold helmet. Surprised laughter flickered through her as she delighted in the entire situation. Sure, there were a horde of baddies crawling over the buildings, and they could all fly, but she had just made a great few shots and was bantering with a companion who thought her young.

Who could ask for anything more? 

 

* * *

 

Tony wasn’t going to lie and say that her humour wasn’t childishly infectious, but he managed to restrain it when she pranced – _pranced_ – away from him to delve through the new piles of ash. They littered the floor like some sort of macabre crazy golf course, which it was in a way, they just had arrows and lasers instead of putters.

He should have known that the kid was going to come down with them, especially when she had recklessly bared her teeth at Natasha, and then something old had smiled at him from her blue eyes. Aerla evidently had no idea what a dangerous game she was playing, but it was hella funny to watch.

Part of his constantly busy brain was still trying to figure her out, waiting for her to slip up and reveal whatever she was hiding. Because he knew she had _something_ ; how else did she slide into the helicarrier like a shadow and slip into their ‘ranks’ as if she belonged there? Ever since Natasha had worked her way into Stark Industries – even under Pepper’s critical eye – he had been wary of everyone, especially friendly, mysterious, twenty-somethings.

Steve was an idiot and Fury was paranoid, that was the only answer to her still being here. So maybe she knew how to use that ridiculous weapon – was he the only one firmly in the 21st century? – but she was still an unknown. She flitted past him again, surveying the floor with a critical eye and far more gravitas than suited her sunny disposition. She was normally all light and annoying glimmer, it was strange how serious she was being now.

A small, straggling bird flapped into view so he aimed a repulsor blast at it, smirking when she whirled around and squeaked. He was so used to SHIELD's boring, collected personas that he quite liked her heart-on-the-sleeve reactions.

He nudged a half-combusted corpse with his foot; something about the larger birds differentiated them from the smaller ones, and it wasn’t just the punch they packed. There was a bruise growing on his shoulder from a particularly persistent one and he winced at the remembered impact. Aerla looked up immediately and stalked over to him, a frown marring her forehead. “Did one get you?”

Tony pulled a face behind his helmet; _okay_ , her reactions were annoying – _leave me alone._ “No, I’m fine.”

She raised an eyebrow as if to say that she didn’t believe him but then she tapped his arc reactor again. “Good, I have need of you yet, Glow.”

The stupid name aside, there was no need to get so up in his grill and invasive of his personal space. She did that a lot, he had seen it, a little nudge here, a scoot there; he knew it was rubbing off and that was why Steve had clapped him on the shoulder – he was still scarred by that.

She was one of those touchy-feely people, oblivious even when he glared at her. If she hadn’t looked like a helpless puppy he would have considered batting her away, but then Bruce would be angry and Tony really couldn’t deal with any more guilt.

She wandered off before he could come up with something particularly cutting so he let it drop, for now. Instead, he asked out loud, “Jarvis, how many escaped?”

“Two dozen small-to-medium sized ones, sir, and the largest.”

Aerla appeared by his side again and watched the skies. “Where did they go, Jarvis?”

“They are pursuing the quinjet, ma’am.”

Tony glanced at her, why had she heard his AI’s response, and just how did she know how to deal with Jarvis as well as he did? No one noticed Jarvis, mostly because he was tech, but also because Tony treated him like he was just an everyday occurrence; Aerla treated him like he was a person – it was weird.

She sparkled at him, looking about eighteen, and he became uncomfortably aware of how similar in height they were, and he had at least two inches of metal under his feet.

“Come on, Sparky, we’ve got places to be.”

“Leave the nicknames to me, kid,” he said, and she jerked back, almost making him laugh, safely concealed by the Iron Man suit as he was. She planted her feet and managed to look even younger, like an angry teenager who was just told she couldn’t go to prom.

The quinjet came soaring around the corner so he blasted off before she could pout, his lips twisting upwards when she muttered curses over the comms. He purposefully flew straight towards Barton, only just hurtling over when he saw the man flinch and Natasha roll her eyes.

A smattering of aliens was on their tail so he blasted them, weaving through the bodies to attract their attention. “Where’s the big one?”

He was surprised to hear Bruce reply, the doc tended to stay out of the chatter when he wasn’t directly involved – and when he was it wasn’t like the Hulk wore an earpiece. Tony didn’t blame him for his down-time; he just wished he could have the same.

“I’m tracking it on CCTV,” Bruce started, and Tony wanted to kudos Jarvis for not only keeping Bruce in the loop, but according to his HUD his AI had turned Steve and the SHIELD agents off for that little titbit. “It veered off, but I think it’s heading for you, Aerla.”

His brakes applied so screechingly quickly that he almost thought they had activated before he had jerked them on. Jarvis had kept Aerla on the comms, smart considering she was being hunted, not smart considering she was freakishly perceptive.

He activated a short-ranged pulse of energy that obliterated the closest aliens and injured the others. Deciding to leave the stunned things behind in case Bruce tugged him on leaving the kid alone, he jetted back to where he had left her. If she got herself killed he would never hear the end of it.

Zooming around the final corner he very nearly laughed at the scene that met his eyes. The quinjet hovered in the air and above it, precariously balanced and letting off arrows left and right, stood the kid.

For once it wasn’t him that Steve reprimanded. “Aerla, get down from there.”

Jarvis rattled off perilous distances and calculations in his ear but her laugh was carefree. “They’re easier to reach now,” she said and then shrieked, “Clint, stop that.”

Barton’s response was sly – he should have expected that those two would get on, “Stop what?”

The jet shifted at least a foot to the left and Tony saw Aerla stamp on the metal hull, sending a clang through the comms. “That, stop that, you bastard!” she shouted, still shooting as she twisted about despite the movement.

“Sir-“

Jarvis didn’t get to voice the warning that pinged on his HUD before Aerla turned and stared straight at him, releasing an arrow that whistled way too close to his helmet. He spun and ashes flew into his visor. “Jarvis?”

“There was no time, sir.”

“Yeah, I noticed that, the death dust kinda gave it away,” he grit through his teeth and wondered how close he had come to something fatal, again. Forget the kid nearly dying; Pepper was never going to forgive him if he got himself banged up because his tech was slow. He needed to tune up his suit, too many hits and not enough maintenance was beginning to take its toll. Enough was enough, he’d get Pepper to come up with one of her brilliant excuses and he could spend some blissfully quiet hours in his lab.

“You’re welcome, Glow,” Aerla said smugly in his ear, and Jarvis brought up the still potentially deadly information again. She was balancing on the nose end of the ship like some sort of death-defying circus performer, and then Barton brought the jet up higher, the two of them chuckling and swearing at each other. Steve was yelling, as always, and it sounded like Natasha was berating Barton.

Tony had the odd feeling of not being the centre of attention for once. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Aerla wasn’t doing the sort of shit that he normally did, amazingly stupid things were his prerogative. He closed in on the wavering plane and deliberately landed super heavy on one wing to send it tilting.

“Tony,” Cap chided sternly, but Aerla didn’t even wobble, just stuck her tongue out at him because his trick hadn’t worked. He flipped his helmet up to mock her but then she mouthed, _‘I dare you’._

His lip twitched, _what the Hell,_ he could do with some fun. He used his suit to pulse-jump into the air before crash landing on the tail end of the jet. Aerla laughed, completely unaffected by the renewed shouting from below and the slanted angle he had caused – he decided that she must be some sort of gazelle.

As he prepared for another jump, she leaped towards him and pushed her fingers against the exact same spot as before on his chest, but a lot harder. For a split second he thought he was actually going to overbalance, but then she grabbed one of his flailing hands, in such a way that she seemed worried the fall would hurt him.

Somehow, her slight form managed to pull him up straight again and then she hopped away, casually shooting a bird that fluttered around the jet’s front window. As if she could somehow tell that he was impressed, she threw him a grin over one shoulder.

 _She wanted to play?_ Tony _created_ risky games, and this kid wouldn’t get the better of him. Steve and Natasha were still bitching, and even Bruce joined in, which meant he must be watching from the helicarrier. Jarvis told him they were a good twenty feet off the ground, almost enough distance that he could catch her when she fell, because _she_ couldn’t fly.

“Aerla, get back inside, we need to find the rest,” Steve nagged.

“The big one escaped me; I couldn’t switch the cameras fast enough,” Bruce apologised.

Tony knew that if he wanted to, _he_ could find it in an instant, but this was proving a little too entertaining. Besides, rules were made to be broken and he had been so bored lately. He overtook the quinjet’s controls and raised them higher, ignoring Natasha’s curses and Barton’s suddenly angry threats. Aerla crouched on her hands and feet, beaming at him as he took them further upwards.

“Sir, is this a good idea?”

“I’m full of good ideas, Jarvis.”

She laughed and added, “Don’t be a stick-in-the-mud, Jarvis.”

Again she toyed with his AI and he suddenly remembered all of the ways she had taunted him over the last few days. _Ear piece, mug, that video she should never have been able to access_. Okay, now the game was about retribution, she _would_ fall. He must have frowned because she stood and placed her palm upwards. _Was she-?_ She crooked her fingers at him.

He cut the jet’s engines and it dropped a few feet before they started up again. Her scream was delighted rather than scared, “Again!”

Tony turned their ear pieces off because he was tired of being yelled at, and then he stopped the rotary blades again.  Aerla rose up on her tiptoes before landing in a giggling mess, flipping her hair out of the way to giddily goad him once more.

He took them up even higher, struggling vainly not to share in her amusement - he hadn’t played about like this since Loki was in town. They went above the skyscrapers and she twittered excitedly, readying herself for another drop, and he would get her this time. She looked up from her feet and fear slashed across her face; _at last_.

“Stark, wait!“

Tony hated waiting. With another flick he overrode Jarvis’s depleting power warnings and turned off the engines, frowning when Aerla scrabbled for her bow. _That was cheat-_

His breath exploded out of his lungs and the quinjet disappeared from under his feet.

 

* * *

 

Aerla had only one inhaled breath to wield her bow, notch an arrow, aim, and shoot, at a moving target that hid behind an ally, whilst her toes felt air.

Stark was flung towards her but she had already fallen, and she watched with sickening slowness as the quinjet fell faster than she did.

“Jarvis!” Aerla screamed, the sound torn from her lips as wind cut at her eyes. She faintly heard the clicked whirring of a motor and then she crashed painfully against the hull as she caught up with it in mid-flight.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” Jarvis’s soothing tone vibrated in her ear and she grit her thanks, patting the metal without thinking. She thought she heard a sense of urgency in his voice but she tried to focus on each area of discomfort on her body.

Her left wrist was a beacon of pain around her bow and she groaned out loud, _fucking dislocated it_. Pushing herself up on one uninjured arm, she blinked against dizzying sparkles and set about clicking the bone back into place.

Aerla gasped at the burn but she had done it a hundred times before. At least she hadn’t broken anything, she would have had to wait at least a few days for it to heal if she had, _intolerable._

The sound of glass moving met her ears and then Steve’s panicked and angry voice came from below, “Are you okay? Where’s Stark?”

 _Stark?_ He was fighting the largest alien the last she had seen him; she presumed he was beating it into a pulp. Aerla could vaguely hear Clint and Romanova talking and remembered that Stark had turned all of the comms off. “Jarvis, switch us back on, please.”

She winced when four angry voices cascaded into her ear but she heard Banner over them all, “Aerla, are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, just a little bruised. Stark?”

“Mr Stark has lost communications, ma’am,” Jarvis replied instead. _Shit._ That was why Steve had asked her about him. She ignored her sore arm and scrambled upright, frantically looking for the ridiculously attention-grabbing suit.

“Can you track him, Jarvis?”

“Unfortunately no, but I know where he last made contact, ma’am.”

She threaded her bow back into her quiver and paced on top of the jet like a mad pigeon. “Bruce? Can you look at Jarvis’s information and pinpoint a location?”

“How can I- Oh, thanks,” he replied haltingly, making Aerla realise that even he didn’t know how Stark’s AI worked. She was once again amazed by how autonomous Jarvis seemed to be, but cursed away the wonder. There had been genuine humour on Stark’s face and now he had vanished.

She swore under her breath; Steve had been right, they shouldn’t have clowned around. If she hadn’t been provoking Stark then she could have paid attention to her wolf’s growing discomfort, and if Stark hadn’t turned off the comms then they might have known the damn thing was coming.

_No, this was my fault._

Just because she healed faster and had danced with death many times before did not mean that she could forget that she played with mortals. She would never forgive herself if something happened to Stark, _damn him._

“He was near the Hudson, head there,” Bruce said in her ear, and she could hear his fingers tapping away.

“I have no idea where that is,” she mumbled; it was not as if the Knowledge test covered New York. The itch called her in one direction but it was still an abnormal sensation and she wanted to be sure. “Clint, you on it?”

Jarvis replied instead again, “I thought it prudent to keep my participation quiet, ma’am.”

“Oh, right, of course, good call.” Aerla nodded distractedly, SHIELD couldn’t know how clever Jarvis was, _I have to keep Stark’s secret too, now_. She stamped on the hull and shouted. “Cupcake, take us down, head towards the river.”

A click in her ear and then he grumbled, “No need to shout. You coming in?”

She was already vaulting to the tail to swing through the open door, and came face-to-face with a very stern looking Steve. “Er, hey Cap?”

“What were you doing up there?” Steve demanded as Clint threw a mocking glance over his shoulder, _bastard._

The jet began to move so she strapped herself in and tried to remain calm. “I _was_ taking down aliens, and then there were... some technical issues.”

Clint snorted so she kicked his chair, but her smile fell when Steve shook his head and replied, “This isn’t a game, Aerla; you could have been seriously hurt.”

She appreciated the gesture, she really did, but what was the worst that could have happened? If, by some quirk of fate, she had lost her footing, Aerla had faith that Stark would catch her. “It was just some fun,” she sighed at his clenched jaw. “He’s going to be fine.”

“Hudson coming up,” Romanova said and the jet tilted downwards. Steve’s face said that they weren’t done with this discussion, but Aerla chose to ignore him and scanned the skies. Just because they had been caught unawares did not mean that all entertainment should be outlawed, dire times needed fun. Stark _would_ be fine, she would see to that.

“Where do you think he’ll be?” Clint asked as he flicked through radar screens that revealed nothing. She wanted to ask Jarvis’s opinion but wasn’t sure whether Stark would appreciate it if she did it in front of everyone.

“Look north, ma’am,” Jarvis murmured almost inaudibly. _Amazing AI._

Aerla leaned forward to crane her neck around the window, inhaling sharply when she saw a familiar red glint. It was bulkier than usual and she realised that Stark and the alien were literally at each other’s throats.

Concern made her chest tight and she frantically pawed at her seatbelt, needing to get outside to help him. Steve blocked her path to the door. “Not the time, Cap, let me go.”

“What, exactly, are you planning on doing?”

She snarled, her wolf rousing in protective fire and staring him down. “Helping him, now get out of my way.”

“We can help from he-“ Steve started, but flinched when she snapped her teeth at him. _Skittish, Steve._ Taking advantage of his shock, she pushed past him and dove out of the door. Steve might want to take things carefully, but she wouldn’t risk Stark’s neck by waiting, not when she could handle with anything that damned alien could throw at her.

Steve called after her but she could deal with his shit later. “How are we doing, Jarvis?”

“I have locked onto his position but communications are not reinstated, ma’am.”

“As long as we have eyes on him.” She followed Stark’s jerky flight path and started to run forwards, aiming just slightly ahead to cut them off.

“Mr Rogers is trying to contact you.”

“Don’t pick up.” She scowled when the quinjet practically revved down her neck. Aerla flicked Clint the bird and then sighed. “Fine, patch him through… Steve, hush for a moment, can you try and distract the rest of the pack?”

There weren’t many of the birds left, and luckily they were tiny, but they seemed to be enough to confuse Stark and his assailant. Steve sighed, “Okay, be careful.”

“Over and out, Cap.”

They sped over her head and Stark veered away from them, leaving the smaller aliens behind. The quinjet swung away and she spotted Clint’s bow in the open door; _huzzah, action time._

Bruce’s sceptical voice surprised her; Jarvis must have kept him on the comms. “You okay?”

“Yeah, of course, why?” Aerla murmured as she watched Stark and the alien zig-zag through the clouds, small bursts of blue surrounding them. _He was trying to fight back, at least._

“You fell earlier.”

Her wrist burned in reminder, but it was easily relegated to an ignored part of her mind. Pain was a familiar companion that she had long become used to. “Oh, that, it was nothing, thanks though.”

“You’re welcome,” he chuckled softly for some reason, but she was too focused on Stark as he finally flew close enough for her to make a worthy shot.

She pulled her bow and sprung onto the river’s edge, the water churning endlessly below. Her world focused on the jumble of limbs and wings, red interspersed with grey, metal with feathers. Taking a deep breath, she counted wing beats and picked her moment.

_One, two, three…_

The shot felt right, hummed with perfection and clarity. A once-in-a-lifetime kind of shot, but for someone who had lived for so many human lifetimes, they were considerably common. It disappeared into the screeching mass and she lowered her bow with a smile, the itch finally lessening.

“What did you do?” Bruce roared in her ear and her heart skipped a beat. The two bodies dropped a few metres and she stiffened, aghast. Had she missed? Aerla never missed, not shots like that, not when a life was on the line.

Stark’s body jerked upward for a second, hope and arc-reactor blue flaring, but then it sputtered out and they tumbled downwards.

“Shit,” she whispered, fear freezing her to the floor. “Shit,” she was shouting now, useless adrenaline bursting through her veins as she watched them plunge into the river below. The water spat and rippled as they disappeared below the surface and she could only watch with sickened shock. Even if she could reach them, Stark was in a damned metal suit.

She had failed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and desperate wistfulness, are all mine.


	8. Sandbags and Sanity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are you trying to tell me that you have a secret agenda?" Steve said lightly and she gave him a dry smile.
> 
> "That has a pejorative connotation, but yes, everyone does. What's important is how much you trust someone, and whether their inevitable betrayal is going to ruin you or simply make you see that trust is bittersweet."

>   
> "What Nature makes thee mourn, she bids thee heal!  
>  O abject! if, to sickly dreams resign'd,  
>  All effortless thou leave Life's common-weal  
>  A prey to Tyrants, Murderers of Mankind."
> 
> _-_  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, _'Addressed to a Young Man of Fortune who Abandoned Himself to an Indolent and Causeless Melancholy'_

 

Aerla stumbled backwards when water exploded and Stark appeared in a crouch in front of her, stinking of salt and feathers. "You fucker, what happened?" Terrified rage had her punching him in the shoulder plate. Pain shot up her arm and she winced and cradled her already injured hand as he slowly straightened.

"Nice shot, kid," he panted, his helmet flicking open to reveal wide eyes and a bone-dry face.

She heaved a shatteringly relieved sigh. "I knew I didn't miss, did it fall on you?"

"Yeah, then my suit gave way, I lost Jarvis."

He must have been crushed under that massive thing, and his remarkable suit had stopped working.  _How disturbing_. "I had him with me, he found you, so did Bruce."

He shook a little and then a lot, water dripping along the dented metal. "Thank them for me."

"They can hear," she said dismissively, trying to get him back on topic. "Why did you lose contact?"

Stark lifted a hand to where his ear would be on the helmet. "Must have cut a wire."

She stepped forward to examine it, but in reality it was to check that he was okay as they both still shook with nervous energy. She half-wanted to push him back in the water for scaring her, but he didn't seem his usual taunting self. Almost dying probably did that to you, though, it had been a while so she didn't remember first-hand.

"Mr Rogers is calling," Jarvis announced before her fingers could reach the scratched red-and-gold paint.

"I'm busy," they both said, Stark grimacing as she laughed. Relief was making her giddy. Stark seemed to be fine, even if he held himself a little stiffly.

She eyed his still bright arc-reactor, regretfully unsure of how it worked. "You have enough juice to get back to the quinjet?"

He bristled and stood tall. "I'll fly back to the helicarrier."

 _Of course you will._ Pleased that he had evidently recovered from his dip, she smiled at his arrogance. "Fine, don't fall this time."

Stark sneered and shot off, spraying her with water droplets. The river water was fishy and dank, and that was when she realised that it wasn't seawater.

It wasn't brine she had scented on Stark, it was fear;  _a Hell of a lot of fear._

Aerla watched him disappear, wondering why he tried to hide it from her. There was no shame in being scared at potentially fatal situations, fear meant that you were still alive, but maybe Stark didn't trust her enough yet. That thought irked her more than it probably should,  _damn humans._

The quinjet roared into place beside her but she waited for it to almost land before she jumped in, her mind wrestling with that abject terror she had scented. Steve gave her one nod that might mean she had gotten away with her earlier snappishness. She smiled absent-mindedly as a miasma of fear, Tesseract, and itchiness scrubbed her skin raw.

In fact, all three of them still whirled around the quinjet.

Aerla looked out the window, surprised when Clint didn't react as she poked his shoulder. "You took care of all of them, right?"

The silence was taut and strange as she glanced between the two pilots. Romanova didn't look up from the controls but she was the only one to reply, "Yes."

Then why could Aerla still feel a miniscule itching underneath all of that bitter, blue energy that was slowly numbing her nose? They must have forgotten some, possibly a big one if she could still feel it.

The helicarrier loomed underneath them so she decided to keep quiet, Stark had looked like he needed to calm down anyway, and she couldn't inform them of a straggler without referencing her magic.

Steve disembarked first and hovered near the door, but not to help her out. She hopped past him and became convinced something was wrong. Clint wouldn't meet her eye and Steve edged slightly closer.  _What the Hell?_

Romanova jumped out of the jet with a box in her hand and then Aerla's wolf tried to lunge at it. The itchiness pinpointed on that tiny box that reeked of anger and fear, a sharp saltiness rather than Stark's cloying. "What the fuck is that?"

The assassin looked at her as if she didn't give a shit, her delicately angled jaw clenched mulishly. "It's SHIELD's," Romanova replied, practically daring her to respond.

 _Don't fuck with me, little girl_ , Aerla almost spat, her rage kindling from strung out nerves. SHIELD was trying to play gods with monsters and there were far too many of those already. She thought the agent had seen her reaction because she suddenly hid the box, but then calm energy soothed her side and Bruce appeared with concern on his face. "How are you?"

Protection warred with absolute anger and Aerla trembled with the effort to control her fury. If  _she_  could only just stop from lashing out,  _how the Hell would Bruce respond?_  She might want to see his other half and smash the shit out of SHIELD, but he wouldn't want that. Hidden teeth bit the air and ached to rip that torturous box from Romanova's hands, but instead Aerla turned stiffly. "Stark make it back?"

Bruce nodded. "Yeah, he was in the hangar."

She took a deep breath and fixed Romanova with one deadly stare but spoke to her side, "Great, let's get a drink; I need a distraction." Aerla looked at Clint, asking for an answer, but he just shrugged and looked away. She didn't want to look at Steve as she left, he was just being what she always knew him to be, an unfailing soldier.

She was disappointed in them.

 

* * *

 

Steve was worried.

Bucky would have said that being worried was his natural state, and it certainly was lately. He wasn't sure whether he could get grey hairs, but he kept expecting to wake up with some. Steve knew he had too eagerly accepted HYDRA's reappearance and now a sense of guilt underlay the waiting. But it gave him something to  _do_ , gave him purpose in this strange, new world that was still apparently  _his America._

Stark was slowly spiralling out of control, getting more and more aggressive with every passing day. Howard's son might frustrate him – and sometimes he thought Tony did it deliberately – but Steve wasn't the one that wanted to keep him captive, even if he was useful.

Steve watched, he learned; he would like to think that he knew all of them pretty well, knew their strengths and weaknesses. Stark's weakness was authority, and his strength was apparently running headfirst into danger with complete disregard for anything else.

Even Dr Banner was starting to get restless with the whispered word of enemies and SHIELD's confining nature. Steve liked it, he enjoyed having structure again. Yes, Fury did things that he didn't always agree with, but that was his prerogative, he was the director.

And now there was Aerla. He had been pleased that Fury had found another member to pad out the numbers, but the way the man had reacted when she appeared made him think that things weren't as they seemed after all. Steve knew that SHIELD were still keeping things from him, ever since he had found those Tesseract weapons they had locked him out of almost everything, so he had no idea where Aerla had come from.

He knew that she was as good with that bow as Barton was, and she was alarmingly like Stark with her irresponsible attitude and boundless energy. But there was something else, something that belied her bright smile and slender muscles. It wasn't just the way she had stood her ground against Fury, it was the way she had commanded him when Stark was in danger.

He had almost thought he was back in the field and Peggy was his officer again, and it wasn't just the British accent that had brought that particularly painful memory on. Aerla could only be in her early twenties, but she hadn't faltered once, took everything in her stride. If anything, he remembered her looking almost agitated when he had told her about HYDRA - and if she wasn't with SHIELD, how had she even known about them?

He worried that Stark was going to lead her astray, or at least encourage their wild behaviour. Natasha had told Fury about their insubordination on top of the jet, but neglected to tell him how  _she_ had almost fallen out of it when catching that alien. He had thought Barton was going to completely abandon the controls to help her, but she had ordered him back and forced the box around frantic wings.

Now the two agents weren't talking to each other and stood stiffly either side of him as he updated Fury. Natasha was deliberately not looking at anything other than her leader, but Barton kept sneaking glances past him, and Steve thought that the agent might look unsure about something.

Steve knew what it was to follow commands, but he didn't think he was blind enough to forsake his safety or the safety of those around him. The disgust on Aerla's face had made him doubt though, as if she had expected more of him.

He had been surprised at himself when he felt guilty, and then he noticed that even Barton had looked shamefaced. What was it about Aerla that made them want to question orders, and why did she strike when the orders were morally objectionable?

It didn't help when she said things that made her seem far older than she was, and it reminded him so much of Peggy that he knew he would end up being lenient with her. He couldn't allow that, the hierarchy was fluctuating and it was his job to set everything in order again.

He wished Bucky were around to knock some sense into him, and help him figure out Aerla's role aboard the helicarrier. Instead, all he could do was see that box safely delivered to SHIELD's scientists, and then head to the training rooms where he could almost pretend everything was normal.

 

* * *

 

Aerla answered all of Bruce's questions about what had happened, brushed aside his apology for when he had accused her of shooting Stark, and neither of them mentioned Jarvis. Instead she gripped Stark's mug and tried to drink tea like a normal person completely unaware of what was happening mere metres away.

It wasn't just the fact that Romanova had captured the alien that served to anger her so much; it was the way that both Clint and Steve had let it happen. They could barely meet her eye, after telling her that they agreed with her, after Stark had risked his life to help them all.

Her answers were getting snippier as her wolf writhed in contained anger, and then she heard footsteps outside the control room as the three accused strode past. The agents didn't stop, but Steve took one look at her white knuckles and hesitated. When he did speak, his voice was commanding. "With me."

She went because if she stayed, Bruce would work out why she was so irate. The doctor returned her tight smile, and she wondered whether he thought she was being disloyal to Stark, because she felt it. It wasn't as if she owed the inventor anything, not really, but after their fun earlier, and then his fall, she almost felt protective towards him.

Really, she shouldn't be allowed near humans, she got foolishly affectionate. Then again, she supposed the Avengers weren't really normal humans.  _That just made it more dangerous._

Steve led her to one of the training rooms, and judging from the copious amount of punching gear in it, it was his favourite. She raised an eyebrow at him and he gestured to one of the hovering sandbags. "You need to work off the energy."

She sighed, only running in her fur would work off this particular brand of irritation, but it still wouldn't help anything; SHIELD still had an alien captured and  _Steve had been bloody okay with it_.

"Why does it distress you so much?" Steve asked, holding her chosen bag on one side. He was being the leader and it would have made her so much angrier, but he genuinely thought he was helping. He didn't understand that she saw the entire situation from afar, and saw that SHIELD were just manipulating all of them.

The only reason Fury kept her on-board was because he thought she had something to offer, but if he knew all that she possessed he might just throw her off –  _if he hasn't cut me open, first._

She admired Steve when he wasn't running around with the wool firmly clasped over his eyes. His inbuilt capacity for loyalty astounded her, and as someone that treated her word with the utmost gravitas, she greatly respected him for it. For that reason alone, she would answer his questions, because she hoped that he might realise his worth.

She balled a fist and half-heartedly punched. "I understand that Earth needs to be prepared, and anything alien we can get our hands on is another avenue of discovery, but enforced capture? I'm not okay with that."

He didn't reveal anything, and she was tempted to fully release her temper to see if he would stumble. "Why?"

"Why? Because they are animals, for all of their alien origin and mystery, they don't know any better. If they've evolved enough to disappear when killed, why the Hell are we messing with it? I don't know what they're doing in there, but I know I wouldn't want it done to me."

Steve nodded but watched her closely. "Would you like to know?"

She shook her head. "I wouldn't trust myself to not react if they're hurting it. It's helpless." She punched the bag. "It's not okay." She punched it again. "It's not fucking okay, Steve."

"I know."

His arms crossed and he radiated discomfort. Aerla paused on an exhaled breath and stared into stern eyes, needed to understand why he had done it. "Then why did you let it happen?"

"Because it needed to be done."

She gritted her teeth, he was just confirming what she already knew, and she hated it; he was meant to be better than that.

She knew that it made her a hypocrite to not do something about it herself, but she had long promised herself that whilst she might influence those she considered friends, she would not stand in the way of humanity's progression. Existing outside of a mortal's lifespan had given her depressing clarity: she could only ever be a watcher, not a participant.

He raised a hand to quiet her and continued, "Not because I'm told not to interfere, but because you're right, Earth needs protecting. We don't know what's out there, Loki might have just been the tip of the iceberg, aliens are one thing, but magic? We don't understand that, we can't control or defend against it."

Steve looked angrily helpless for the first time and guilt was a heavy wave that settled on her shoulders. She was hiding the truth from them, had been doing so for a millennium. But what else was she to do? She had just seen what humans did to things they didn't understand, and even mild-mannered Steve deemed it acceptable.

"What if it was a person?" Aerla groped for a similar situation and chose someone Steve wouldn't like to test the extremes, "What if it was Loki? Someone with thoughts and feelings, and a control of magic, would it be okay to torture them then?"

He hesitated for a moment before hardening, and she wanted to think it was SHIELD that had embittered him. "If they didn't want to share their knowledge with us then I would wonder why, if they aren't with us, they must be against us."

That was such a soldier's response and it evoked the question of whether he would think she was with them or not. She considered them her allies, but a displaced secret or even Fury's command might send her tumbling from their regard. It was why she was starting to detest SHIELD; the organisation was supposed to be about defending Earth, but in reality it seemed to specialise in preserving humanity.

She was not human, she had lived amongst and fought alongside them for most of her life, but her magic set her apart. Would they all turn on her if that information got out? What if they knew she had spent years running in with wolves when yet another human had discovered her secret and had her hunted?  _Would history just repeat itself like it always did?_

The Avengers were something marvellous, a revolutionary idea that shouldn't have been needed and yet did its job perfectly. They would protect the planet when she could finally leave, but if she was honest, she was scared that they might protect it from her.

Aerla knew that if her secret got out, she could run from them. If she really had to she could disappear off of the face of the Earth – unfortunately not literally.It was why seeing Steve and Clint's easy acceptance was so hard to bear, because she didn't want to have to run, but they might want to put her inside a tight box too,  _just like Bruce._

She tried to keep reminding herself that their rejection wouldn't matter. She didn't even belong on Earth, would be out of their hair as soon as she could manage… Yet she knew it would hurt just as it always did, and that was why she couldn't stop herself from preparing Steve, because things were different this time.

"Sometimes people have secrets, Steve; sometimes your.. superiors.. keep things from you."

"If it's to keep people safe, I allow it."

Had Phil's death kept people safe? In a way, she supposed it did. The Avengers might not have been able to defeat their enemy without such motivation; New York would have been reduced to so much rubble. Would Steve see it that way, that Fury was in the right?  _Probably._

 _Hell,_ even the nuke aiming for Manhattan was technically used in self-defence. She gave a weak punch as she tried to reason with a steadfast soldier. "And if they're trying to keep themselves safe?"

"As long as it isn't putting others in danger."

She relaxed a fraction; she had never purposefully harmed an innocent. Of course, she had known people that had - over the course of a few centuries you couldn't help but form some unsavoury friendships - and she had trusted some of them. When fighting for a cause, hypocrisy tended to complicate everything.

Trust was forever bittersweet.

"I've been betrayed before; so many times that you would think I should stop trusting people. I've been stabbed in the back, "  _literally,_ "burned,"  _once,_ "lied to,"  _countless times,_  "and I've followed bad orders from people I trusted."

He frowned at her and she almost smiled when he asked the question of every subordinate. "Why do you keep doing it?"

"Because life is lonely and difficult without people to rely on, sometimes we have to take their bad points with their good points, because no one is completely risk free," she answered honestly. Even she had come out of seclusion a few times a year, just to mingle,  _to feel human_.

"Are you trying to tell me that you have a secret agenda?" Steve said lightly and she gave him a dry smile.

"That has a pejorative connotation, but yes, everyone does. What's important is how much you trust someone, and whether their inevitable betrayal is going to ruin you, or simply make you see that trust is bittersweet."

 _You're too young to understand._ Because if –  _when_  – she betrayed him, she wanted him to see that not all secrets were bad. She had used hers to help others where possible, even though nearly everyone who had known had tortured her for having it.

His humour dimmed as he processed what she had said. "That's a damning statement, Aerla."

"It's why I'm standing on the other side of the bag."

He smiled but there was something wary in his gaze now. She hated that she had put it there, but Steve had too much damned obeisance. The day he realised that he didn't need to follow SHIELD would be a momentous one, because he could achieve so much if he just took some initiative.

"Was Stark right, should we not trust you?"

She snorted and placed her palms on the plastic casing, her magic twitching at the modern material as she came to a conclusion. "I'm sure Stark is normally right about a lot of things, but I would defend Earth against anything, even things we don't understand." And wasn't that just throwing a spanner in the works,  _damn humans._

His wariness disappeared and he replaced her hands with his. "That's enough for me."

She tilted her head, because he seemed to really stand behind that. Affectionate disbelief made her shake her head and smile. She had said that she would essentially deceive him, but if it was in defence of the Earth, he was okay with it.

Soldiers were a strange breed.

 

* * *

 

Steve dismissed her when she accidentally used her left arm and winced at the swelling around her wrist. He tried to look at it but she kept him away, placated him by saying she would ice it immediately. If he saw she had dislocated it, he would be surprised when she was fighting fit tomorrow.  _Ah, the difficulties of speedy regeneration._

In Cap's defence she did feel a little calmer, but distress was still simmering below the surface, her wolf alternating between snarling at shadows and relishing the faint magic prints still in the hallways. She was starting to toe a dangerous line with the amount of pent up emotions she was harnessing.

Aerla wasn't troubled though; she had lasted longer without shifting, admittedly not under such stressful circumstances and with starlight whirling through her pores. Still, the worst that could happen would be her snapping at someone, probably Stark, but he could take it.

She decided to expend some of that mental frustration by doing just that and headed for the control room. Her foot halted on the threshold when there was a distinct lack of storm in the room. Only Bruce's calm energy and a strong sense of unease pervaded the space, it felt wrong. "Where's Stark?"

Bruce looked up at her with a frown and emanated worry, only serving to rack up her strain. Aerla had thought Stark was okay, assumed he just needed some space, but she knew where she holed up if she was trying to deal with something.  _Salt and wide eyes._

"Why would he be uneasy with water?" Aerla interrupted before he could reply.

Surprise chased his apprehension as he seemed to wrestle with a decision for moment. Something about her wary stance must have convinced him because he suddenly looked at her intently. "He was captured and waterboarded-"

Fretful paws immediately tugged her feet back down the hall because torture struck a tender chord in her heart  _and Stark should have been okay by now_. Bruce ran ahead of her to reach Stark's door first, his palm ineffective on the scanner. "He's locked himself in, I can't open it."

Aerla could already sense the murk of fear leaking into the corridor,  _foolish man_. "Jarvis, please open the door."

It opened and Bruce threw her an amazed glance as she pushed past him into the salt-saturated room and thanked the AI. Stark must be bad if Jarvis was letting her in, and she was already jittery from the layered emotions that reached out to swaddle her. She followed the thick trail of terror to a rigid form tucked up against the wall and the sight made her heart ache.

"Tony," Bruce called as he tried to get past her, but Aerla was keening in her chest, needing to help the huddled ball of fear that she sorely empathised with. If she had known he was still this embroiled in his anxiety she would have helped him, because she knew exactly how he felt.

She went to her knees and pulled his damp face up, holding his cold cheeks in her hands and forcing him to look at her. "Stark."

Feverish brown eyes stared at nothing and his jaw jerked, making stubble scrape her palms. It unnerved her to see him so unfocused, trapped in a panic-induced memory. "Breathe, Stark, it's in the past."

Bruce mumbled and wrung his hands, not helping the atmosphere in the room. "I thought he was past it, but he was just pretending."

"Of course he was, he's a fighter, doesn't want to show any weakness," she said as she gently rubbed her thumbs across Stark's tan cheeks, trying to ground the quaking man. "Jarvis, how often do these happen?"

"Mr Stark had been making progress but the water and the adrenaline proved too much for him."

Aerla hummed, remembering her own uncomfortable experiences. Stark's eyes closed as she murmured, "Direct memories tend to be. He's just in shock, repressed it for too long so no one would see."

Bruce knelt by her side but kept his focus on Stark. "If I asked you how you know this, would you tell me?"

"No."

"I thought so."

Aerla paused, the skin under her thumbs had started to warm but she did not want to alienate Bruce; he was trying to be friendly and she couldn't help but respond in kind. "I'm sure Stark said that once, though."

"He did."

They shared a miniscule smile before turning back to Stark whose shivers had finally stopped. Aerla debated internally, Stark seemed to trust Bruce, but not enough to give him room access; would her interfering negatively affect their friendship? She didn't want that, but neither would she leave Stark here with his demons.

"Bruce, would you fetch me a glass of water and something to eat, please?"

"Of course." He got up immediately, almost apologetic.

Once his footsteps disappeared she removed her thumbs from Stark's cheeks and tilted his chin up. "Enough, sir."

The inventor's eyes snapped open, their calculating glint back in full force. "How did you know?"

Aerla smiled and sat back on her haunches, happy that he was back to his grumpy self. "I know what it feels like when you come to around people, it's tense, your breathing changed."

That and the stink of fear had stopped eking out to choke her.

He eyed her warily. " _Do_  you know what it's like?"

"Yes, enough that I apologise for intruding." Because she knew that sometimes you just wanted to deal with it yourself, even if Stark didn't seem to be handling it that well. _It must have been recent to affect him so badly,_ she thought with a little twinge of concern. "But Bruce was pacing, I assumed you wouldn't want his brand of sympathy."

His wariness didn't lessen but a gleam of humour warred with it. "He does tend to fuss."

Aerla smiled wryly. "I can imagine. He'll be back soon though; you can tell him we talked it all out, if you wish." Because Bruce would insist it happened with someone, he seemed like one of those people that believed in talking out every issue until it was resolved.

"Will we?"

"No."

He frowned but she stood and offered him her hand before he could ask any more questions. If he shared his secrets with her – although he didn't seem the type – she would be tempted to reciprocate, and she couldn't risk that. Camaraderie was one thing, bringing up painful pasts was another.

Her concerns for the exhausted man in front of her confirmed her fear: she was becoming attached to the Avengers, even more so now that they had fought side-by-side and despite how disappointed she had been in some of them. But wasn't that just their little inevitable betrayal? They had already exemplified what she knew to be true, that trust was ultimately a double-edged sword.

Again, she shook herself from the stupid daydream. She couldn't let this sense of kinship impact her hunt; she would not be left behind again. Aerla may owe Earth a duty, but she was owed a bigger one, and she was planning on finally cashing it in; regardless of how pleased she was that Stark was okay.

He opened his mouth but closed it again when Bruce returned with a glass of water and what smelled like a ham sandwich. She took both and gave the former to Stark, biting into the latter with a satisfied sigh that only slightly calmed her bubbling anguish.

"That's mine," Stark said, sipping his water when she raised her eyebrows at him.

"Water's good for you," she mumbled around the bread, swatting the air when he stepped towards her. "Thanks, Bruce."

Stark rolled his eyes when she repeated herself to make him say it too. "Thank you, Bruce."

Bruce chuckled in what seemed to be surprise, but then sobered when Stark straightened his bedraggled t-shirt. "Are you okay, do you need to talk?"

Stark very nearly looked at her, and that was enough to prompt her to speak. "He's fine; we had a chat, didn't we?"

He looked at her properly then, his brown eyes weary but assured. "Yeah."

The doctor frowned at them both, so she smiled brightly and tried to ignore the feel of agonised paws scraping under her skin. Stark might have recovered, but as if she had taken all of his discomfort, palpitations had her skipping breaths and desperately trying to control her trembling.

The inventor sighed and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. "I need a drink." A look passed between the two scientists and then he added, "Coffee, of course."

Aerla wanted to analyse the clarification but there was a whine building up in her throat and she had to cough to release it. Later, she had to still her shaking hands around Bruce's kindly donated mug. In fact, she managed to last until the sun began to set and they sent Stark to bed.

His sneer was the last thing she heard as her magic screamed bloody murder and claws raked her from within. She didn't worry that someone would go looking for her because she was adept at repression, and mortals had always been blind to her ancient concern for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and secret agenda, are all mine.


	9. Whiskey and Whines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her nails cut bloody crescents in her palms as she tried to stop the quaking, tried to tell herself that she just needed a little more time. The pain that would normally shock her into calm instead had her strangling a scream as she barely held her power in check. "Please," she breathed, "Please, Jarvis."

>   
>  "That you were once unkind befriends me now,  
>  And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,  
>  Needs must I under my transgression bow,  
>  Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
> 
> -  _'Sonnet 120',_ William Shakespeare

  
Aerla lurched into her room and collapsed with her back against the wall, wincing in relieved agony when the door closed against the rest of the world. 

Her wolf bucked and bit under her skin, writhing against the milieu of fear, bitterness, restraint, and a tortured itchiness. She shuddered at the memory of Stark's terror creeping on her fur, at being contained for so very long, at the tiny snatches of air before being shoved back under and it  _hurt._

Aerla panted jaggedly and pawed at her clothes, her phone falling to the floor with a clang.  _Oh Hell, this was not good._  It had been too long, she had waited too long; there was too much lingering magic on this fucking ship and she couldn't breathe without glorying in the sparkles.

She was overwrought and stressed and guilty and there was only one person around that she had inconceivably come to rely on, and it wasn't even a real person. For once, her distrusting magic didn't care about the sheer amounts of technology that surrounded it, it just wanted  _out._

"Jarvis," Aerla panted, pushing her palms against the metal walls to try and ground herself, but the faint motor rumbles tickled her hyper-aware nerves. Her earlier words to Stark about repression echoed in her head – she should have heeded her own advice. It had been so long since she had inundated herself with society and now it was biting her on the ass.

"Ma'am?"

She writhed and tried to keep her voice steady, "I have a secret, Jarvis, and I can't tell anyone, especially not Stark. What do I do?"

There was the briefest of pauses. "Will it harm the others, ma'am?"

She laughed hysterically, her back scraping against the wall. The line seemed stolen straight from Steve's mouth and it irked her, but pained neediness overwhelmed it. "No, never. But no one can know, Jarvis, absolutely no one."

Her nails cut bloody crescents in her palms as she tried to stop the quaking, tried to tell herself that she just needed a little more time. The pain that would normally shock her into calm instead had her strangling a scream as she barely held her power in check. "Please," she breathed. "Please, Jarvis."

There was a silence that seemed to stretch for an eternity but could only have been a scant second, and then that brilliant artificial intelligence spoke again, "I will be your confidante, ma'am."

A scrap of thought that doubted trusting Stark's invention was choked off as Aerla lessened the excruciating hold on her magic and a glorious rush immediately pushed through her veins. Relief was a shocking balm that cloaked her as the shift felt so completely _right_ that she hated herself for waiting for so long.

She cackled as fur exploded through her in a white-hot wave and she fell forward onto paws. Her spine stretched and each vertebra popped satisfyingly into its other place. Her elbows twisted painlessly and the arcs of pleasure along her veins simmered to a burn. She knew from vain excursions to a lake or an available mirror that she was the colour of a star-studded night sky whilst her eyes remained the same shade of blue. Built on the lines of a grey wolf, she was large but slender, her shoulder almost as high as her hip had once been.

She felt whole again, as if she had been cutting the blood off to a limb.

Shuddering with delight and huffing a shaky laugh, her eyes caught on a mug that had been red a scant second ago and was now a deep grey. The world was lit in shadows instead of colour and the fur on the insides of her ears trembled from distant sounds. Her sense of smell was the only thing that remained exactly the same despite her nose now tipping a muzzle, but now she could taste the scents that intrigued her so.

"Are you alright, ma'am?"

Nodding her head at the newly nuanced voice, she sat on her haunches and scratched away the aches of shifting. Aerla restrained her magic's snarl at Jarvis, it didn't understand technology, for all it was protecting her hide at the moment.

"I would be remiss, ma'am, if I didn't let you know that your previous request about 'spying' is still in action. This will remain off of the mainframe."

Her furred ears twitched, hearing far more in his tone than she normally did. She thought that Jarvis almost sounded curious, and she instinctively rubbed her shoulder against the wall in a useless sign of affection.  _First humans, now technology; I am definitely going soft._

An overpowering smell that left a bitter patina on her tongue managed to distract and trouble her,  _Tesseract energy._ That should be disappearing alongside the slowly fading sparkles, and yet it was just as strong as the day she had arrived. She had devoured the information Phil had given her, eager for knowledge from beyond the stars, was told that Thor had taken the device with him, but her nose told her otherwise. She didn't know enough about alien tech to guess what that meant, but it was enough to make her want to explore everything in lieu of a scan.

She couldn't, of course; she didn't want to end up like that damned alien.

Gifted with the pleasing clarity of hindsight, she ran over the events of the day. Her thoughts dwelled on the two men who had disappointed her; both dedicated and loyal, but perhaps – she thought – to the wrong cause. Clint concerned her the most, because the unhealthy bitterness he harboured against the aliens meant that he had gone against the grain to capture one. It meant that he was being coerced and the notion upset her.

She couldn't be angry anymore, not after Steve had shown her a mortal's point of view and made her feel the guilt that a race of gods should have been feeling. It wasn't her fault that aliens had descended, but her magic made her feel responsible, as if she should have protected the humans as the fledgling race they were. Instead, they had been left to deal with the aftermath of vicious visits, and now even petty aliens were paying the price.

It did not escape her melancholic amusement that there was an eerie familiarity to that, and it partly explained why she was so keen to stand by them. The evidence was all there, Odin had dabbled with his worship or thrown a weapon of power to the surface, but ultimately he had abandoned them to their fate. She had not lied to Steve; she  _would_  defend Earth, because she still felt an onus even after an entire millennium, to Earth and its madcap defenders. This planet was all she knew, and she would forever consider it hers, but she was not Earth's.

Lately, she was finding it difficult to remember that, especially when the Avengers were starting to warm the lonely cockles of her heart. Aerla hoped that Thor hurried up, because her wolf was getting remarkably comfortable.

Settling herself on the floor for a much-needed nap, she awoke with her paws in the air and froze before remembering that Jarvis was looking out for her. She stretched luxuriously and then pulled her fur back inside, the transition deliciously easy.

"Welcome back, ma'am."

She rested her forehead against the wall and murmured a disbelieving thank you. The AI kept surprising Aerla and she fell more in love with him every time he spoke; she still had no idea how he worked, and she had a feeling that Stark would never tell her.  _Stark._  She straightened and gave a disappointed frown to the ceiling. "Why didn't you call me, Jarvis? You know I would have gone to him immediately."

"He commanded me not to tell anyone, he mentioned you specifically, ma'am."

She snorted,  _clever man_ , but Stark had underestimated his invention, because when Aerla had come of her own accord, Jarvis had unlocked the door. She patted the wall as if he could feel it. "You are amazing, Jarvis."

"I fear that you will make me as egotistical as Mr Stark, ma'am."

Surprised laughter erupted from her throat and she shook her head incredulously _._ "So, how are we going to do this, do I need to swear you to a blood oath?"  _Funny how those had fallen out of fashion._

"Nothing so archaic, I assure you. Would you like the footage removed completely?"

Aerla nibbled her lip; this was a vitally important decision as to how far she would deceive them. She didn't _want_ to lie to the Avengers, but finally confronted with beings that might kill her was enough incentive to. "No, just, I don't know, blank it out? Hide it, but don't remove it. Put it in Stark's folders, he'll never look there."

"I understand," Jarvis replied, and she wondered whether he did. The AI couldn't know what would happen if it all came out, but the phantom scars that had long since healed burned in remembrance.

Jarvis had already worked against his creator in numerous ways, was his confidence just another aspect to his brilliance, or was it one of Stark's? If anyone was going to discover her secret of his own accord, it was the inventor – he was too clever for his own good. She trusted Jarvis to hide the truth, but she also trusted Stark to eventually discover it.

"My life is in your hands, Jarvis, please take good care of it." She chuckled at the madness of that fact, and rubbed her palms together, wide awake as delighted energy still sizzled from the shift. She considered cracking into the bottle that Clint had given her but drinking alone in her SHIELD room seemed a little unfortunate. Perhaps she could commandeer the control room, it wasn't as if anyone would be up at this time of night - they were all morning people.

Being alone was surprisingly tedious; surprising because she had managed it well enough for the last century, but now her life just seemed a little lacking of storms and laughter.

 

* * *

 

Aerla was incredibly bored.

She shouldn't have been; she felt as if she had so much to do, so much that she hadn't even realised that she had to do. But it all seemed pretty far away at the moment – a whole night's worth of sleep away – and she couldn't sleep, so she was bored.

Normally, boredom would be combatted with video games or research, practicing her archery, or running on her paws; but the first were all at home, the second she had been doing all day, and the third she had just done. Instead, her wolf dozed contentedly in her chest and Aerla was perched on her favourite counter, in the dark control room, thinking about all the content updates that she was missing whilst she rubbed elbows with superheroes.

It wasn't until Stark stumbled in that she realised what she wanted to do, and who she wanted to do it with. A still-alight concern had her hoping he would sit with her and talk about normal, safe things. It was all she could allow herself, because she was starting to care too much. He flicked one of the low lights on and they spoke at the same time.

"Couldn't sleep, Glow?"

"What are you doing up, kid?"

He gave an exhausted grin and she a wry one, still mildly disconcerted at that strange nickname _._  It didn't feel strange that he was here this late at night though, he looked the type to tinker with his inventions when his brain didn't want to shut off, or when he desperately wanted it to. He headed towards the back of the room. "Coffee?"

"No, I have something better."

She pulled out the bottle her fellow archer had given her earlier as part of their bet. Aerla wasn't exactly a drink-your-problems away kind of girl, but she had enough Norse heritage to appreciate the allure. Stark squinted at it. "What is that?"

"Hell knows, Clint gave it to me, it's not even English."

"Is it Russian?"

"You think Black Widow just gives out her stash to anyone? No, it's whiskey, I'm trying not to read the label."

His eyebrows twitched with interest and he finally padded over to her. She hid a pleased smile as he leaned against the counter opposite hers and eyed the room. "Are there any glasses?"

"It's 'kay, I don't have… Cooties?"

She struggled to remember the American word, but he snorted so she assumed she said it correctly. It was hard enough trying not to fall back into her original dialect, but at least modern English suited her. Americanisms, on the other hand, she was still struggling with.

The bottle clinked against the glass counter top when she leveraged against it, opening the lid to let the liquid breathe. Stark sneered at her, "It's not wine."

"Fine, you can take the first drop. Be my guest."

Aerla thrust the bottle at him and he tipped it with the skill of a man who had been doing it for far too long. She frowned for a brief moment, wondering whether this was actually a good idea for Tony Stark. Had there been rumours that he was an alcoholic? Surely not, no one with an alcohol problem could build an arc reactor and fly an Iron Man suit,  _right?_

"Shit, that tastes like shit."

She flashed her teeth at him and laughed, not bothering to say she had told him so. SHIELD didn't seem the type to harbour alcohol, so for all she knew Clint might have had it knocking about for years. Stark's head shook in way that shuddered remembrance and handed the bottle back to her.

She grimaced at him over its edge, remembering the look that had passed between the scientists earlier when Stark had wanted a drink. "Am I going to get Bruce's angry eyes tomorrow?"

"Nah, I'll be fine."

"… That doesn't mean I won't. Hell, you  _are_ meant to be recovering, aren't you?"

"I can stop whenever I like."

They both chuckled at the stereotypical line of an addict, but she gave him the benefit of the doubt when he held his hand out for the bottle.

"I'm blaming you, if he asks."

"Think he'll believe you?" Stark asked as if he had all the integrity in the world, so she simply gestured at herself in one sweeping motion and did the best puppy dog eyes she could manage. He tilted his head and murmured, "Well, damn."

She winked at him. "You alchy."

"Hey, I don't have secret shit whiskey stashed away."

"Neither did I, it was Clint's, and at least I don't get drunk."

Stark narrowed his eyes at her on their fifth alteration of drinking. "Is that a challenge?"

"No, a challenge requires a worthy foe, and you are not."

She hadn't meant to be taunting, it was simply a statement of fact. Her magic chased away tipsiness unless she purposefully pursued it, but Stark drew himself up regardless. "I offered a drink to a god, if I could take him, I could take you. You're like, 5 feet high."

"Wow, you can talk … Who did you offer a drink too?"

He smiled smugly at her curiosity, the glaze of alcohol already glinting in his eyes. "Loki, just before he threw me out of my window."

"In Stark tower?"

"Yeah, and then I got to practice with this." He jingled his arm and she noticed the little steel cuff that encircled his wrist like some sort of chunky bracelet. As interesting as that was, she was more intrigued by his arrogance – did it know no bounds?

"You sassed Loki?"

"No one can sass as well as I can."

"Evidently, if you met glass and air a few minutes after," she drawled sarcastically but he remained stubbornly assured.

"That just shows how good I am."

Aerla snorted at him, rolling in the fumes of the quite frankly, awful whiskey. Stark really was astoundingly cocky, but he was also entertaining. She was still discomfited by Steve and Clint's easy obedience to SHIELD, but Stark? Stark would sneer and say something cutting before striding off to do the opposite. It made Aerla like him even more than she should.

They drank in comfortable silence before he had to ruin it by opening his mouth and asking, "Did Cap convince you to catch an alien, or was it Natasha?"

There was a moment where her entire body froze and her breath was a little harder to catch, but then she remembered that Jarvis was everywhere and Stark was a nosy fucker. "I was a little busy saving your foolish ass, actually. I only found out when we got back and then I was outnumbered three to one."

He didn't have the grace to look apologetic and instead responded with a snarkiness that she was beginning to associate with him, "Yeah, well, then I was having a  _moment_ , which you know about, because you interrupted."

She savoured the whiskey's torturous burn before showing her teeth in a small smile, seeing his cutting remark for play. "You're welcome."

When his cheek twitched in a barely-there smirk, she knew that his humour was only attainable if you were slightly senseless. Of course, the enjoyment that had her happily rocking on her counter meant that she shared that alarming character flaw with him.

She had not thought that she would get on with the grumpy inventor who had tried to alienate her when she had first arrived, and yet only days later they were playing chicken on the quinjet and sharing alcohol at ridiculous o'clock in the morning. She was trying unsuccessfully to shore up her defences, not harbour another chink in her armour, but Tony Stark made her laugh.

He tilted the bottle at her. "It's karma, you know?"

Aerla knew from the way his gaze had darkened that he was talking about his panic attacks. She attempted to take the bottle from him but he shook his head, his eyes glazing for a slightly different reason this time as memory gripped him once more today. At least now he was tinged with regret instead of fear.

"I don't know how many people my weapons killed, more than I realised after my arms started going to the enemy."

' _The Merchant of Death'_ , that was what they had called him. She had tutted in superior disgust at his arrogant interviews from before he became Iron Man, at the flashes of insight on the news; humans were getting too good at killing each other in senseless explosions of destruction. Now it meant that Stark spent his nights trying to escape his past.

He must have read her distaste because he shrugged his shoulders and tinked his knuckles against his chest as he spoke, "But I changed, I stopped mass-producing, worked on the arc-reactor; I  _am_  self-sustaining energy."

Aerla took another hot gulp and spoke into the harsh quiet he had created, "Did it help?"

Stark was too deep in his cups to see that she knew from experience that it didn't. The deeds were already done and the rest of your life was spent dealing with them, it made immortality a bloody grim prospect. At times like these she sorely envied humanity's ability to grow, to cope, to change.

She tried to soothe her wolf back into an easy sleep so she that could just  _forget_ for a little while, like the drooping man across from her was doing, but she was too worried about him. He had lived through a difficult day and now she had plied him with shit whiskey. "Go to bed."

"You're the kid, you go to bed."

 _You have no idea who the kid is here,_ she thought with amusement. He blinked blearily at her so she employed some tactics. "Fair enough, let's both go, it's getting late."

He nodded and set off, pausing to take another sip from the bottle, which she allowed only because he was doing what he was told. Hesitating once more at the door, he looked everywhere but at her. "Thanks, by the way, for earlier."

"Don't mention it. No, seriously, don't."

He met her eyes and she thought a wry smile might have tugged at his lips before he left. When his footsteps disappeared down the corridor and the lights dimmed of an AI's accord, she tilted her head at the ceiling. "Keep an eye on him, please, Jarvis."

"I have been doing so for many years, ma'am."

She tipped backwards onto the counter and smiled fondly; that was the great thing about butlers, they were always there, even if you weren't thinking about it. She rubbed an absent-minded palm on the glass top, whilst the other clutched the lightening bottle. "When did he stop drinking?"

"Two weeks ago."

Wincing, she took another swig of the bitter liquor.  _Shit_ , did that actually make her a bad influence? Albeit entertaining, she would keep an eye on him; a little bit of fun never hurt anyone and it would be really boring in the night times otherwise.

"Are you angry at me, Jarvis?"

"No, ma'am, Mr Stark is normally here alone."

A genuine lift to her lips occurred then, because she liked making people happy, especially ones as clever as Stark; and whether the AI was capable of emotion or not, his opinion mattered to her. His apparent capacity for trust would always astound her, especially when he showed Stark the alien, but not the wolf.

It hit her that if Stark knew about the capture, he would have seen her talking in the training room, because Steve was on the watch list.  _The bastard knew I was not okay with it._ She laughed softly and shook her head, unused to being tricked and reluctantly appreciative of Stark's cutthroat smarts. Now he knew where she stood, on both torture and on SHIELD, and he had heard her saying he was normally right,  _damn it._

Eventually, she drained the last of the whiskey and sighed into the dark emptiness. One bottle and only an hour wasted. It was going to be a long, few nights if this continued.  _Maybe I should find another drinking partner._

Aerla wondered idly whether Loki would –  _or could –_ ever take up Stark's foolhardy offer of a drink. She didn't even know where the gods were, let alone if they could get drunk. She scowled at the grey ceiling obscuring her vision; there really was only one way to find the answers to her questions, but the stars still seemed so far away when she thought she had been so close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and regenerating liver, are all mine.


	10. Dreams and Dread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was one of life's greatest lies that the clouds looked soft enough to cushion her fall.

>   
> "For myself, I find I become less cynical rather than more—remembering my own sins and follies; and realise that men's hearts are not often as bad as their acts, and very seldom as bad as their words."
> 
> \- J.R.R. Tolkien

 

The dream never changed, it was always the same places, the same people, the same gut-wrenching misery that would have her waking up with a choked off cry. Aerla tried to tell herself that she knew what would happen and so it couldn't affect her, couldn't scare the creature that had lived for a millennium, but it didn't work, it never did.

Sweat immediately broke out on her palms, and the grip on her broken and misshapen bow was clumsy and wrong. She looked at her fingers but they felt strange, her stance uncomfortable, and her quiver confining. She felt ill at ease in her own skin, her eyes too slow and her pulse too irregular. Wind that didn't carry a smell whipped her hair into her face and when she blinked against it, the scene crumbled into nothing.

A snapshot diary flickered into existence and each excerpt was a still and a film and a recording and had a direct line to her heart. Emotions that were as fresh as the day that they had first pained her, reawakened to torment. Heather fields were the trick to start with, letting her relive exultation and self-discovery, but it didn't last long. Fire and pitchforks were the immediate follow-up, shouts and jeers the vocal backdrop to a life of terror and shame.

The wooded pages were cool and quiet, but they nipped with enforced submission and a hierarchy that she was bullied into understanding. Her tongue felt fat in her mouth when she forgot how to speak the language of humans, but she remembered the words when sorely familiar insults were hurled at her again, alongside rocks that warped into bullets. Gunfire echoed through the cage her mind had become, fire that had evolved to shoot instead of merely burn.

Aerla settled when the tanks appeared, because it meant that she would wake up soon. First, she had to see the snow and the red wolves, but that hurt in a different way, a heavy ache rather than a bloodied wound. She flinched from the scent of broken skin and bone, trembled at the goodbye, and struggled to run towards the present where the exposed feelings weren't so fresh, even if they still lingered.

The chapters of loneliness were easier to deal with, because they were numbing rather than too much. Endless days of nothing but determined hope and monotony, but she knew that it had ended when she had found something, at last. Aerla wanted to smile, because this was the moment her land had screamed and gods had returned, it meant that now she could open her eyes and cry.

Aerla couldn't wake up.

She should have realised that the dream would change, because she had changed the story, time had passed. New York was at her feet, the Asgardians had left and she had failed again, and then Phil's gun touched her temple but it hadn't at the time,  _it hadn't_. A click and the page fluttered to show a red sheen in an unmarked box, SHIELD's handiwork. Fury signed the papers that shipped her off and Romanova wiped her name from the records.

Steve's lip curled with disgust and his shield dropped from his hand, clanging into the dust. Bruce raged within bloodied glass as a yelling Clint stood above him and fired an arrow into his skull. The Iron Man suit stood both abandoned and scattered to the winds, whilst Stark shuddered against the wall and his arc reactor faded into nothing.

The gods didn't return and the Avengers didn't want her.

Glass shattered in her fumbling hand and shit whiskey burned the open wounds. The throttled scream finally woke her up and she shoved her fingers into her mouth to muffle the weakness. Blood tanged against her lips and she realised the glass in her nightmare had been her nails as she clawed at her palms. The thick fuzz of alcohol blurred her thoughts and thickened her tongue until she sobbed in the dark. It reminded her of the past when she had known so little and forgotten so much.

She needed to get outside, needed to escape the fear of rejection, of a tainted past.

"Jarvis, I need air, where can I go?"

"The hangar, ma'am."

She mumbled her thanks and threw herself down the corridor, deliberately avoiding the bridge and anywhere there might be people. That astounding, brilliant AI had already opened the bay door and she took such hesitant steps towards the edge. She detested the dread of a drop and gloried in it at the same time, it was a grounding sensation, and at least it meant that she had escaped into reality.

It was one of life's greatest lies that the clouds looked soft enough to cushion her fall.

The roaring gales tugged her forward so that her toes kissed the night-sky. Jarvis had kept the lights off and in the darkness it looked like she was already plunging towards the dishonest billows of moisture. Her knees began to shake and she awkwardly landed on the floor, her hands automatically gripping for the sharp edge of the descent.

Aerla tried to look past the cloud layer and wondered where in the world they were, whether they ever brushed past Britain and she had been blind to it. Too concerned with her mission and then too involved with the Avengers to spare a thought for her lonely land. She reasoned against herself, that the Avengers _did_ want her, and that meant that the gods would return too. For a moment, the fear whispered again, so she abandoned the trembling thought and tried to focus on not crawling into the abyss.

She forced herself to merely stare at the swirling emptiness until the terrifying enticement of the  _l'appel du vide_ subsided. Finally, she could look away from below and flop onto her back to look at what was really important. The siren song of the stars immediately held her in its grip, and if she ignored the hard, metal floor against her spine, she could almost believe she was anywhere in the world, anywhere in the cosmos.

 _Asgardr_  looked upon the same stars that Earth did, sat as they were along  _Yggdrasill's_  long-reaching limbs. Aerla knew the old stories, when the points of light were animals and heroes and not just balls of dying fire. Did the  _Æsir_  know the modern truth, or did they stare at the stars with her fascination, wondering whether they held all of the answers?

She supposed not, gods thought they knew everything and she didn't even know if they dreamed.

 

* * *

 

Loki had been locked in his cell for a little under a month now, with nowhere to go but the few small steps allotted him. He could traverse the space with his eyes closed, knew every inch as if it were ingrained into his subconscious. There was only one place he could travel at times like these, when he felt trapped in his own skin.

Casting an idle glance about the empty room surrounding his prison, he cloaked himself and summoned a simulacrum. The spell was not a challenging one even when he made it perfect to the tiniest detail, but to fool someone like Thor or an errant guard required barely any thought at all.

He spent a rare moment regarding himself and wondered for the thousandth time how he had not seen the obvious. Dark hair, green eyes, pale skin, slight build; he was the complete opposite of his supposed brother, the antithesis to the golden heir, the shadow to the light.

A vicious sneer tilted his lips that his illusion mirrored and he had the uncanny sensation of seeing what everyone else must see.  _A mere failed pawn; easily manipulated once, but no longer._ He maintained wearing his armour because he was not beaten nor was he defenceless.

His countenance was the same, neutral, if a little bitter at times, but it was easily hidden behind a well-worn shield and a sharp tongue. Still, he could not hide from his own disgust at what he saw, so he called upon his magic once again and let himself fall through the astral plane.

There were no safeguards, no restraints, nothing to stop him; because no one else on Asgard could do it. His power was unmatched, he had long outstripped his devoted tutor and he had devoured every book the King's library had to offer, whether it was meant to be read or not.

Walking Yggdrasil's paths on his own power was a skill that no one else had mastered.

A light-studded sky that offered unparalled freedom stared back at him, but it was confinement inside Asgard where he could eventually overthrow the Allfather. And so Loki whiled away his time humouring Thor's feeble attempts at conversation, waiting for his moment to strike, and occasionally walking amongst the stars. From the world tree's roof he could see everything, from the golden glory he had left to the misted mountains of Niflheim that nestled amongst the ashen roots far below.

Loki found it morbidly fitting that to fall from the throne would mean a literal descent into the realm of death. Kings only left the throne to die, they might posture and pretend to instate an heir, but the crown could only be claimed from cold, lifeless fingers. Thor was as much of a fool as he to think that the Allfather would ever willingly pass his title over; only a permanent Odinsleep would secure that.

Loki's fingers curled of their own accord at the memory of Gungnir in his hand, at the briefest moments of tantalising power. He had been so very close, the throne was his seat and the army was at his behest, but the norns had ever laughed at him. Perhaps it was golden staves that proved his downfall, for they were certainly at the apex of each of his failures.

More likely though, it was emotion that foiled him. Hatred might fuel a rampant fire into dangerous intensity, but it also obscured reason and twisted thought. Of course, Loki kept his revenge in a chilling cloak around his shoulders and it served to merely warm him. His rage twined coolly about his neck like a snake, so strong was the feeling that he could almost feel the scales against his skin.

The sensation was similar to the ghostly bark that cracked beneath his heels. Loki knew that the tree was not real and yet he still heard the rustle of leaves in the breeze that lifted his hair. Magic was a potent thing and the well inside Yggdrasil was ancient and clever. He let the strength of it urge him along and almost smiled when it tangled with his in a welcoming caress.

The tree was lonely, it liked it when Loki visited and trailed his fingers through the glittering dust. His coiled rage settled here, where he could wander as he wished and dabble in the spring of untapped and unbowing power. Here he had developed his skills and escaped from the ever-watching eyes of the Æsir, let the familiar magic fill him as he began to feel more at home amongst the stars than anywhere else.

An echo of thundering hooves had him half-heartedly glancing for the elusive stag that always teased him with its mysterious passing. If he did not leave now he would be tempted to search for the invisible beast and Loki was fairly certain that it was just Yggdrasil toying with him. It was a distraction, the tree trying to entice him to stay, but distractions kept him from achieving the one aim that he was all too happy to kill for.

With what might have been deemed reluctance in lesser beings, Loki fell back into his cell and dismissed his mirror image. The stars fell away as the breeze whispered a goodbye, and then golden walls rose to incarcerate him once more. Assimilated power crackled along his fingertips but he idly expended it, let his body shudder forlornly at the loss; for what was power to a prisoner?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and star-seeking, are all mine.
> 
> On a more, er, science fictive note, I am of the fond belief that Yggdrasil is overlaid cosmically on top of our solar system. The tree-dwellers can see Midgard plainly but the rest of the Milky Way is seen as if through a window, mere stars of unimportance. However, if Earth is the gateway, who knows how to jump between the two? *Twilight Zone music*
> 
> Also, someone asked me why Aerla occasionally speaks in Old Norse and Loki does not. The easy answer to that is because English has become Aerla's preferred language and she peppers her mother tongue in when the words are appropriate. Loki, however, would always speak in Old Norse (or an Asgardian variation), and so his Allspeak translates for you all ;)


	11. Pairings and Parents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Aerla stiffened as it got closer and closer down the long street, her magic getting more discomfited with every wing beat. This thing was wrong. It did not belong on Earth, looked utterly foreign against the Manhattan backdrop and dwarfing the quinjet."

>   
> " There is a voice inside of you  
>  That whispers all day long,  
>  "I feel this is right for me,  
>  I know that this is wrong."  
>  No teacher, preacher, parent, friend  
>  Or wise man can decide  
>  What's right for you-just listen to  
>  The voice that speaks inside. "
> 
> \- ' _The Voice',_ Shel Silverstein.

 

There was nothing quite like the dawn of a new day that could make a person feel both refreshed and exhausted. Aerla blinked tiredly into the lashing wind as the quinjet soared above Manhattan's glimmering skyscrapers once more. She was still rubbing sleep out of her eyes but at least the sun was warm on her feet as they hung out of the open door, the heat making her feel a little more human.

Steve chided her for being so irresponsible, like a parent to a misbehaving child, so she glanced over her shoulder. "If I slip, it's Clint's fault, not mine."

The quinjet swerved as if to emphasise her point and Romanova growled at a chuckling Clint. The agents had been alternating between silences and bickering all morning, but Clint kept playing with Aerla regardless. It made her smile as she reasserted her hold on the doorframe and turned back to the brightening sky.

Stark had grumbled with all the irritation of a hangover when the sun's glare had slanted through his helmet, but he hadn't ratted her out as the cause just yet – she really was starting to like the grumpy inventor.

Even Bruce was on call today; Clint had called in the big guns when Aerla had blearily smashed into his door and demanded that he get ready. She wasn't sure why she had gone to him and not to Steve, but that's where her instincts had led her. Not that Cap had been concerned; he was just pleased that she had been on the ball for an attack.

Fortunately, by the time they had all assembled in the control room, the threat was close enough that Jarvis could lock onto it and Aerla didn't have to explain why she had, once again, tumbled out of bed and known something was coming.

Clint had backed her up and then briefly gripped her forearm in gratitude, and she knew that it was because she had forgiven – if not forgotten – his choice to side with Romanova over the captured alien. Aerla had already decided to do so the night before, but the acceptance had come even easier when she had eventually realised what was coercing the man she considered an ally.

Her tired senses had caught up with her when Clint had stumbled out of his room to shut her up and she had noticed something else combined with his heavy scent of leather and plastic. A faint fragrance had been entwined with his – a remarkably amusing one of  _atropa belladonna_  – and it belonged to his co-pilot. Clint was evidently doing more than just flying jet planes with Natasha Romonova, but Aerla wasn't a fool, she wouldn't divulge that particular titbit of information until a very lucrative return.

She might have smiled a little too broadly at the assassin this morning, but hey, there was nothing like some honest blackmail to sweeten the alien-befouled day. The agent had narrowed her eyes in suspicion but only a wolf's acute senses could pick up a subtle clue like scent layering The perplexing pair were evidently trying very hard to keep their liaisons a secret and so Aerla was happy to conform, even if she thought that Clint was too easily led by a pretty face – and perhaps some poison.

Her morning's humour had dimmed when the frustratingly familiar alien itch racked up and Aerla had absent-mindedly clawed at her arms. Her skin already bore red criss-crosses where her nails had tried to cut through in an attempt to alleviate the god-awful irritation. She had pulled her sleeves low but if she wasn't careful she was going to bloody herself before the enemy had even arrived, and even now her fingertips were trembling with the urge to resume their frantic scratching.

"No hull walking today, Aerla," Steve chided again, presumably because her feet were still swinging into thin air.

She could tell Stark and Clint were silently laughing at her even without actually hearing it, so she snorted and spoke into her earpiece to still enjoy the breeze. "I wasn't the one that fell, don't tell me."

"You don't have rocket boots," Steve remarked, and she wanted to laugh at his adorable description of the Iron Man suit. She wondered whether Stark was offended to hear one of his magnificent creations simplified so harshly.  _You can take the man out of the past, but you can't take the past out of the man,_ she knew quite a lot about that.

"I promise to try and not fall off anything."

Bruce chuckled over the comms. "Why do I feel 'try' is the operative word?"

"I like to keep my promises vague so I never actually break them," she said cheerfully, and smirked at Steve's frown until he sighed and reluctantly nodded.

Steve was so easy; as long as Aerla didn't end up getting hurt – and she would never hear the end of  _that_  – she could get away with whatever she wanted. In fact, she was half-tempted to do something stupid to test that theory, but no, that was the rebellious part of her talking and not the enthusiastic hunter that wanted to hunt the aliens who threatened her planet.

Stark was a point of red in the distance, hovering in the opposite direction to the itch. Aerla's earpiece clicked and his voice was casual. "I've got some, feel free to help out."

Aerla tugged her bow free and calmly notched an arrow, waiting for Romanova to bring the quinjet adjacent to the approaching haze. Her first shot of the day was just the same as every other,  _exhilarating._ She would never tire of her favourite weapon, just as she was as much at home in her fur; they were both innate to her very being.

Stark zoomed about in a tight pattern that forced her to shoot the stragglers rather than the horde. "Are you deliberately getting in my way?" She asked quietly, the engines covering her words from the rest of them.

"Just testing you," Stark replied and finally used a weapon that burst through the throng.

"Do not, or I will miss."

"On purpose?"

"I never said that," she murmured, and thought she heard a snort of laughter. Smiling and sending a shaft dangerously close to make him jerk away, she revelled in the absolute strangeness of the moment. At no point in her long life had she seen this happening; aside from re-entering human society and finding fun and worthy comrades, she was in the strangest transport she had ever seen, and there were  _actual aliens_ on Earth.

Sure, they weren't the aliens she had waited for, and they were annoyingly different from her magic, but it was still amazing. Humans were quick learners, a backlash – or a benefit – from being short-lived mortals, and they adapted marvellously well. Never encountered super heroes,  _bang_ , make an organisation centred on them. Gods come to Earth,  _boom,_  get said organisation to send 'em back to where they came from. Aliens were merely something that humans had been expecting for a while.

A rapidly growing pain had Aerla's head whipping around and wishing there were windows all around the aircraft. She was close to climbing up onto the roof when Bruce's voice clicked through. "Er, guys? I think you need to see this."

"Wow," Stark said simply as Aerla scratched her arms and grit her teeth when the quinjet seemed to turn so  _bloody ponderously._

Ahead of them, centred in another blur of tiny birds, flew an incredibly large one; larger than yesterday's, larger still than the whole jet. "Fuck," Aerla muttered and then her magic twitched in a very focused and murderous way. "Move, move the jet, move the fucking jet," she shouted, assuming far too correctly that the thing was coming straight for them. "It's as big as we are, it knows we aren't friendly!"

Aerla threw herself to the floor to brace herself as her world tilted, and for a moment she saw rooves beneath her feet. Steve's face was strained as he watched her cling on to the metal, but her grip was strong and fear was a damn good motivator. Instead of shouting at her, he ordered into his earpiece, "Stark, do not engage, follow us down and wait for a plan."

"Plans are for people with time, Cap."

"Don't be an idiot, Stark," Aerla snarled when her nails scraped against steel, but it wasn't an order, it was encouragement. Amusingly, he immediately understood what she meant.

"No close ups, I know."

Steve seemed shocked at the easy acquiescence so she shrugged as best as she could without letting up her hold. Stark would never flee, Steve should have known that. At least Aerla stood at Stark's back – although unfortunately not literally at the moment – and reminded him that his suit was not top notch.  _Come on, Steve, know your men._

The quinjet righted a safe distance away and she was already hanging out of the door to watch Stark dodge a brutal onslaught of many beaks. She knew where she needed to be, up there with him, or in prime position to shoot. The first was impossible, and the second Steve didn't want.

She turned to the captain, because Stark could engage the aliens for a bit longer, and Steve had to learn that she would never sit idly by when she could be in the fray. He looked incredibly torn, but nodded tersely and joined her at the door. "Barton, Romanova, hold it steady, we're going up."

Aerla halted with her foot half outside and stared at him. If she denied him he would wonder why she could handle the possible hurt and he couldn't, but if he came with her she would be worried about him.  _Damn humans…_

Although, she had to remember that Steve was no normal human, even without his genetic modifications. "Fine, watch your footing," she urged, and he gave her a small frown before self-consciously commanding her to do the same. "I always do, Cap."

Aerla hopped onto the hull and turned to pull a surprised Steve up behind her. He was far heavier than she had expected, even bracing for his huge muscles. Her foot slid the tiniest amount and he immediately took all of his weight off, red staining his cheeks. She pulled her bow and watched the skies as he readied his shield and stood next to her.

"That's some mass you've got there, Steve."

"And you're stronger than you seem," he replied enquiringly, so she flashed him her teeth and shrugged. She wouldn't ask any more questions if he didn't, because she did not want to explain where her strength came from.

Aerla had always been slender, her regular runs and constant archery practice kept her lightly muscled, but there was an underlying power that exceeded her training. She suspected that Steve's clout was of a similar strange origin, but hers was magic-fuelled rather than a biological serum.

Her eyes caught on Stark's last second escape and she aimed at the swarm, clipping one bird and killing another. She turned her attention to the rest but a circle of metal covered her eyes and a loud clang shuddered it closer. Blinking away the unexpected swirling ashes, she belatedly realised that Steve's shield had stopped the injured bird from falling on her.

"Hell, thanks Cap."

He must have not appreciated her calm response because he stiffened further. "Take more care."

"Yes, Captain."

He grimaced at her drawl and she tried not to get annoyed at him for being who he was. Steve was just apprehensive because she looked young. Aerla always found it quite funny that in reality, she was always far more dangerous than whatever they were up against;  _except perhaps today._ Aerla knew she found that far too exciting, but it was  _action_  after so many years of waiting.

"Ma'am, Mr Stark's power is fluctuating. He will need a moment to recalibrate."

Aerla sighed at hearing Jarvis, rather than his creator, updating her.  _Stubborn man._ "Stark, get down here, the quinjet can take over for a bit."

She thought that she heard him mutter something deprecating to Jarvis and she marvelled for a moment that the AI was using her to help Stark. It might have disturbed her if she didn't adore one and find the other amusing. Aerla suddenly became aware of Steve watching her very carefully and thought over what had just happened. She had given orders again,  _oops._

"What do you think we should do next, Cap?" Aerla appealed to his leadership, because she was still inclined to listen to him, even if he did sometimes think she was like fragile china. Steve had run a tight ship before she came along and now she was fucking up the hierarchy. It was too easy to forget where she was when she was enjoying herself, but as with wolves, you couldn't dethrone the leader and plan to leave; it turned a healthy pack into a dysfunctional one.

Besides, she didn't want to lead.

Steve blinked at her tone and then thankfully reverted to his normal authoritative state. "We're going to need to split up," he said it reluctantly, as if he could read her eager thoughts. "Keep them between us and whittle them down."

"Excellent, I'll take the low point." She tapped the hull with her foot. "Ground floor, please."

"Yeah, yeah," Clint groused and took them down far faster than he had to. Steve swayed unstably so Aerla held out an absent-minded hand to balance him before jumping from his flank. The tarmac beneath her feet was a comforting feeling after flying for so long.

"Aerla." Steve seemed concerned but he nodded confidently when she drew her bow and looked ready to kick ass. "Be cautious, call if you need anything."

Touched, she saluted and watched him take great pains to carefully enter the quinjet again. It flew off and left her in a little whirlwind of dust and itchiness, the latter thankfully lessened now that she was further away from the biggest alien.

"Stark, can you bring them past us?" Romanova asked through the comms and he replied by doing exactly that. Once the aliens were successfully diverted, he swooped down to land next to her.

"Come here often?" Aerla murmured and surreptitiously surveyed his battered suit as he flipped his visor up. He seemed okay still, his arc reactor was bright and reassuring, but Jarvis had said that he would need a minute to work. Aerla was good at distracting people.

Stark almost smirked and inclined his head over hers. "Yeah, my tower's over there."

Turning on her heel she had to lift her neck far too high to see a ridiculously tall building decorated with a familiar letter 'A'. Seeing it in person was a sight different from the television, and the chalk to her home's cheese. " _That_ is your tower?"

"Yes."

"Did you intend it to be that high?"

"Yes."

 _That was too high_. Why were New York's streets so obsessed with blocking out the sky? It made her uncomfortable to be surrounded by so much oppressive material. Still, she reluctantly admitted that Stark's view must be utterly fantastic. "It's not bad."

He snorted, as if he could tell she was feigning nonchalance. "It's still being fixed after Loki's little visit."

She shielded her eyes against the sun's glare and tried to see something too far away. "What window did your brilliant sass have you fall out of?"

"The top one."

Aerla whistled,  _that was one hell of a drop,_ and he treated it like it was nothing. It must be nice to be a single-minded genius billionaire, it seemed very simple. Yet he still spent his time helping Earth and being an Avenger, Aerla found that quite admirable.

There was something wistful on his face before he hastily covered it and tried to look down his nose at her. "I hope your headache is as bad as mine."

"It's not great."

"Good," he said bad-temperedly, making her grin. She liked his gruff sociability; it reminded her of another time, of another person, one that only existed in her memory now. Stark watched her fingers as they started scraping her skin once more so she forced her hand away to pretend nothing was amiss.

"How's your suit?"

He finally looked away and scowled. "Fine."  _Liar._

Bruce interrupted her humour, "The quinjet's coming back to you, how are you doing?"

" _Fine_ ," she replied and glanced at Stark mockingly. He just watched her notch an arrow and then flicked his visor down, making her ask a question that had been bothering her, "Why the full-face helmet? I half expect you to produce a lance and ride against the aliens on a horse."

"It gives me a heads-up display," he divulged, surprising her with the amazing truth. "And who needs a horse when I can fly?"

Mildly jealous of his brilliant inventions, she jerked her head away when he blasted off and hoped that Jarvis had done his stuff. A ringing screech pre-empted the arrival of both alien and aircraft. The primeval noise sent a shiver down her spine and evoked a vicious excitement, her wolf wanting to destroy the trespasser.

Aerla stiffened as it got closer and closer down the long street, her magic getting more discomfited with every wing beat.  _This thing was wrong._  It didn't belong on Earth, looked utterly foreign against the Manhattan backdrop and dwarfing the quinjet.

Its feathers were grey and the flesh was darker, a larger replica of the others she had already seen. Small somethings left the jet's tail end and flashed ineffectively against its chest. Stark's dissatisfied sigh came through her earpiece. "Make way for the big guns."

He fired off something rocket shaped that blazed when it met its mark. The alien flapped to a stop and shrieked at him, a blast pattern of seared plumes decorating its front. It was not really a surprise that Fury wanted Stark's input on weapons, the inventor had clearly not forgotten his knowledge of munitions, even if he wanted to. "Your turn, kid."

Aerla's arrow was already on its way and lodged into neck, the fletched end snapping off when the alien thrashed about. She followed it with a second but it bounced off the hard burnt skin on its ribcage and she swore under her breath.

It locked onto her as the cause of this new irritation so she darted in the opposite direction, weaving behind a car and hiding. Battle hysteria bubbled under her skin and made her laugh breathlessly. Aerla hadn't had to run from something potentially fatal in a long time and she had sorely missed the exhilaration. "Tagging you in, Glow."

Stark rocketed into position to fire something else off, so Aerla peeked over the hood and got another shot in their target's throat. The alien swung towards Stark and he dropped like a stone to avoid it, his boots only kicking in when he was scant inches from the ground. Aerla released the breath she hadn't known she was holding and turned her attention back to the creature, loosing another arrow closer to its skull.

It shrieked and flew away, the itch lessening as she considered where it would run too, and whether it would come back with reinforcements. She was confident that they could deal with more small ones, but another big one might be challenging.

"Anyone have eyes on it?" Aerla trotted down the street and stood under Stark's still-hovering form, wanting to check on him. He landed when he noticed her but kept his helmet shut.  _What can you see, clever man?_

"It's flying over the river," Bruce replied haltingly, and Aerla felt Stark shudder the tiniest amount. It irked her to remember his fear, so she called on the quinjet and prepared to stay where they were.

"You on it, Cupcake? We're a while away."

Clint grunted in response, "On the trail."

Aerla stretched her back and let the endorphins rush through her, pleased with how the day had gone so far. Her wolf was an irritated bundle of nerves in her chest, knew there was more fighting to be done and wanting to bite into feathered flesh.  _Not today,_  she soothed, especially not with the Iron Man HUD keeping an eye on everything.

A dart of pain made her wince. "I thought you said it was by the river?"

"It is," Stark said, presumably watching the same video footage as Bruce through his helmet.

Aerla flexed her magic to see if she could follow the throbbing point and then threw herself at Stark as claws raked the space that they had just stood in. The Iron Man suit thunked against the gravel as she rolled over it and grasped for fletching, looking for their attacker.

The skies were empty.

"Yeah, if you could not assault me?" Stark got up slowly and dusted himself off.  _Had he not seen it?_ Two heated itches on her mental horizon confirmed her theory, there was definitely another. One was still painfully close; whilst the other was a faint niggle.

A shadow fell across them and Stark looked up calmly. "Huh."

Dark red feathers and a lethal black beak circled overhead, looking at them with eyes that blazed hatred. It was of a similar size to the other, possibly slightly larger; it certainly looked more deadly. Aerla was fascinated despite the danger, and not in the clinical let's-cut-it-open-and-see-how-it-ticks kind of way. "Amazing, we have a mating pair."

"There's a second one?" Romanova asked with faux-interest.

"Do you think they're nesting somewhere near?" Bruce asked with genuine.

Aerla watched their watcher past the tip of her arrow. "Yes, and I imagine they nested nearby once, they're very bird-like. Stark, what were the bones like, were they light?"

"I didn't have much time to think about it." His voice dripped sarcasm and she winced with an apologetic laugh. The species was nothing like she had ever heard of before, other than some sort of strange, evolved avian. Aerla had read enough of the Norse sagas to know that the nine realms contained most of the same animals, could they have come through from  _Yggdrasill?_

_Am I the only one who cannot climb the world tree?_

She was startled out of her pity party when their attacker swooped closer and drew back as Aerla nicked one bright feather. It fluttered down towards them and she leapt for it, chuckling when the colour almost matched the Iron Man suit. Stark was decidedly unamused so she cheerfully tucked it in her hair and remarked, "I think this one is the male."

"What makes you think that?" Bruce questioned, sounding curious for new knowledge.

"The feathers on this one are bright, really bright. According to Darwin that would mean that he attracts all of the attention so that the dull female can escape, think peacocks and peahens."

"They're aliens, who says they even have males?" Clint bit out with the stubborn tone of 'kill things that confuse me'.

"They must do, or why have the different colourings, how do the smaller ones keep appearing?"

Stark finally spoke to answer her, his voice cold, "Pretty dark to send your kids off to fight."

Memories of tiny birds and shrieking death cries thrust themselves in front of her mind's eye.  _Oh Hell._  They had been killing babies, and these things – she couldn't even bring herself to call them parents – had been producing more little soldiers before coming themselves.

Aerla echoed a contained snarl, rage burning through any concern she had of appearing too lupine. "Mama bird is  _mine._ "

"I guess that leaves Daddy to me," Stark sighed, as if he had something better to do. Her wrath withdrew from the unnerving memory of what had happened the last time he had gone up against a larger one, and the mating pair were bigger still.

They needed backup.

She nibbled her lip and murmured inaudibly to Jarvis, "Can you patch me into Bruce, please?" Aerla waited until Stark had taken offence at another feigned swoop and attempted one of his own, before speaking again. "Bruce?"

"I know. I'm on my way down."

She blinked in surprise as she watched Stark toy with the monstrous bird. "How did you know what I was going to say?"

"Because I was already thinking it and a mess might be just what we need."

She laughed to cover her alarm at their shared thoughts, but then genuine enthusiasm threaded her tone. "I won't lie and pretend I'm not giddy to see you."

He paused before questioning, "Me, or the other guy?"

"Both, of course."

"Aerla, you need to stay away from him, he doesn't know you."

She frowned at his tense reply; she could run faster than whatever he turned into, even without turning into something else herself. "But  _you_  know me." She had conviction that his 'other guy' would recognise her, he looked through Bruce's eyes, didn't he?

"Aerla-"

"Aerla!" Steve's voice cut in and she winced at his incensed tone. Stark must have had Jarvis pull her back into the communal lines. As if to confirm that theory, he flew far too close and she got buffeted by the displaced wind.

She swore after his disappearing form as the alien landed on a low building across the street. It settled its wings and watched her warily. "Aye, Captain?"

Steve sighed angrily at her glib attitude. "Where were you?"

"Bird watching."

"And you couldn't answer?"

"Have to be quiet, I'm hunting wabbits," she mock-whispered, and notched another arrow when the great feathered body shifted. "Papa bird's on the move, heading… West. Permission to shoot, Captain?"

Aerla could have sworn she heard Steve curse before he stiffly answered, "Granted, try to keep him away from any windows."

"I promise nothing." Aerla breathed into a shot that pierced a shoulder muscle and it shrieked something fierce as it rolled to look for her. Throwing herself to the floor, she hid behind a railing...  _that was actually incredibly flimsy._

"I could do with a distraction," Aerla muttered hotly, and gulped when deathly sharp black claws clamped alongside her position. Her magic scraped to get out and fight the foreign presence but she held it in check,  _barely_. "Too late."

Its caw nearly burst her sensitive eardrums but she pushed away from the shitty excuse for a wall and snagged a shaft in its throat. It beat its wings to steady itself and a whirlwind of sand blinded her until tears leaked down her cheeks. For a terrifying moment, she couldn't see anything and the urge to shift almost overpowered her.

"Incoming," Clint yelled as the noise of engines approached. The alien turned to watch the bigger threat advance and then launched towards them, missing by a hair as Romanova spat something in Russian and the jet tipped downwards in evasion.

The grey, female alien entered the fracas and the two circled the quinjet, Clint and Romanova shouting facts and figures at each other. Stark was a tiny form in comparison, but he evidently packed quite a punch when the grey bird almost tumbled from the sky in an intense blast.

It chased him, his boots scarily sputtering as he gunned away and Aerla stood to aim a determined shot at his chaser's chest, diverting it enough to focus on her instead. "Shit."

The female clearly wasn't hampered by their previous attempts of attack and closed in on Aerla far faster than she could find a building to hide in. Her fur tickled her skin as adrenaline pumped through her veins in time with the pulses of air at her back. She had faith that someone would save her from a gruesome death; she just wasn't sure who it would be and fervently hoped it would be bloody soon.

The earth jumped under her feet and then an inhuman roar from behind had her screaming in agony and clapping her hands over her ears. She fumblingly focused on her other senses to make up for her temporary deafness. Untamed anger writhed through the air and it came from the hulking form of green muscle that had her pursuer's neck in one beefy hand.

"Holy Hell, is that Bruce?"

Her injured ears couldn't decipher her voice and a jumble of noises buzzed in response. Instead, she watched the startling scene unfold in front of her. Bruce shook the alien with one arm and pulled at a grey wing with the other. A snap shuddered through the air and what once was whole, was now halved, and then puffed into oblivion.

The world vibrated again; the remaining point of pain against her magic intensified and tasted of wrathful vengeance. Bruce had destroyed its mate, scarily easily.

The male dived over her head and raked its razor sharp claws along green flesh. The heady scent of blood reached Aerla's nostrils and her wolf howled for gory recompense. Bruce had helped her and now he was paying for it. 

_Unacceptable._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and gun-dog mentality, are all mine.


	12. Contempt and Controversy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I am not a monster, and neither is he."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first of the Edda influences in this chapter, but fear not, there still may be an appearance from the comic persuasion later on (I bow to the alternate universes).
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and anguished empathising, are all mine.

>   
> "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."
> 
> \- ' _Beyond Good and Evil_ ', Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Aerla snarled at the victorious shriek from the bird's cruel beak and at Bruce's outraged roar of pain. He whirled in a blur of green skin, crimson blood, and grey feathers, vainly reaching for an alien that was too fast for him. It continued on its deadly rampage and scraped along the quinjet's hull, the noise tearing through Aerla's already injured eardrums.

Sound a haze that she couldn't quite make out, she left the others and bolted after their departing attacker. The murky noise of battle continued behind her as the smaller birds swooped in for kills, but Aerla was after a bigger target. Revenge was a bright burn that spurred her on as she fell into an old frame of mind, her entire being focused on the hunt. The streets turned into grass and the stone towers became trees, and all that mattered was the chase.

An airborne alien was speedier than even her lupine swiftness and it eventually outstripped her as it twisted around office blocks. Aerla skidded to a halt in the middle of a street and forced her eyes closed against the adrenaline, resorting to tracking to outmanoeuvre the ridiculously quick prey.

The mental point of discomfort flared brighter and weaker as it moved, and she turned on the spot to follow the unnatural itch. When Aerla opened her eyes, she knew that the giant bird would pass in front of her, far down the road, and her arrow would be waiting. She didn't care what she hit, as long as she hit  _something._

Her shot struck a wing and bounced off ineffectually, but it was enough to anger the alien and entice it towards her. It was bigger, faster, and for once, possibly deadlier than her; but it wasn't smarter. Well, if you could call waiting for a head on attack particularly smart,  _probably not._

Two predators locked stares, and then one of Aerla's shafts sprouted from the bird's right eye.

Aerla escaped down the closest alley and jumped at the resounding crash behind her. Dust trickled onto her head as the blinded thing careered into the building she had just been standing in front of. A pained squawk followed Aerla's breathless sprint and she panted into her earpiece, "I can't hear anything, but Papa's down for now."

Vibration buzzed in response so she reiterated, "I have no idea what you're saying."

A noise that sounded suspiciously like a snarky drawl answered.

"Shut up, Stark," Aerla gasped as she returned to the street she had left Bruce on. He was gone, but Steve was finally on the ground. Relief lightened the steadfast soldier's features as his lips moved and she thought he might have said ' _gone to find you'._

"Who?"

Tinnitus rang confusing sounds in her head so she tried to read his lips again. It looked like ' _Stark'._

Stark had gone looking for her?  _That was sweet._  Not that she had needed the help; she had temporarily downed the alien by herself. Aerla took a moment to exult at that thought, but Steve was frowning again, more concerned with her welfare than the enemy. He pointed at his own ear and then at hers, seeming to ask, ' _are you okay?'_

Aerla deliberately misunderstood, unsure whether normal ears would have burst from an inhuman roar. "Yeah, it really hurts. Where's Bruce?"

Steve tried to reply but then her ear piece buzzed and he walked away to answer it. She couldn't see or hear what he was saying now, except when he glanced back as if confirming she was there to whoever he was talking to.

The point of pain finally roused and then a distant bellow reverberated through the ground. A strange sense of clarity overcame Aerla, as if because one of her senses was dulled, she could take a metaphorical step back from the frenzied situation.

Bruce's other form running past the end of the street cinched the dream-like state. He really was  _huge._ What biological marvel had turned him green? Inquisitiveness overcame any sense of trepidation. Sure, there was something quite terrifying about him, but it was still  _Bruce._

Aerla scented fear and was alarmed to find that it came from Steve. He gripped his shield and shifted it in front of them both, as if even the sight of the hulking behemoth sent him into defence mode. Bruce was fully focused on the alien, had already killed one that nearly caught her, but Steve still looked at him as if  _he_ was the monster. Aerla didn't like that.

Steve actually flinched when she touched his shoulder and tilted her head at him. He mouthed, ' _he isn't safe'._

"Is he going to be okay?"

He shook his head, but in correction, not in denial, and repeated more insistently, 'He _isn't safe, stay away from him.'_

Aerla wanted to roll her eyes in exasperation at mortals and their refusal to wholly accept anything that they didn't understand. An extreme fight or flight response epitomised in their very nature; if it was too big to ignore, capture and kill was the next course of action. It wouldn't surprise her to learn that the only reason SHIELD hadn't put Bruce in a museum – or a cell – was because they were worried he would smash everything to pieces.

Blood moved in Aerla's ear and she heard crackles of noise amongst the roaring. If she was lucky, her eardrums would heal before anyone realised they had burst. This wasn't the first time it had happened, and it definitely wouldn't be the last; humans were  _loud._

Steve turned to her for a second as he spoke into his earpiece and Aerla caught a snatch of ' _choice or force?_ ' And then she was fairly certain that he swore. What about that question would make  _Steve_  swear?  _Shit must have hit the fan._

Aerla wondered whether it could have been about Bruce. She knew he had a hair trigger control on his other half, but did choosing to shift make it different?  _How fascinating._ Perhaps there were fewer similarities between them than she had realised.

Not that it changed anything,  _he was still Bruce_. Stark plainly stood by him, so why the hostility from everyone else? It was instinct to be scared of something much larger, and stranger, than you; she had been disconcerted by the alien after all, maybe it was that. But Aerla was not like everyone else, and Bruce was not an alien.

The quinjet reappeared and Steve settled at the sight of it as he gestured at her to jump in before him. Aerla shook her head in easy denial, she had something else to accomplish first. "No, it's fine, you go ahead, I'll follow below."

Steve almost reached out to touch her arm in concern but held himself back and instead nodded authoritatively, assurance in her skills finally overtaking the worry. Aerla fondly bumped his shoulder with hers and trotted towards the still airborne point of pain. She understood Cap's need for contact; she had always been a tactile, touch-hungry thing. It grounded her when things went to Hell, especially when harm threatened and allies were turning into friends.

Her balance wobbled when one ear fizzled into sound whilst the other remained a fuzzy mess.  _Just in time, I'm coming to find you, Bruce._  "How is he?"

"Bad," Stark responded simply.

"Elucidate, please."

"Well, he's being mobbed by the swarm, and he's more red than green."

Aerla swore and ramped up her speed, using the side streets to hide her unusual haste from the over-flying quinjet. She would never forgive herself if Bruce became seriously injured, because she was the one who had called him down.

"Kid, where you going?" Stark asked, foiling her furtive plan and using that damned nickname again. He must have been watching her on his HUD, that or Jarvis was keeping an eye on her.  _Stars save me from nosy entities._

Aerla chose to answer truthfully, because she would need their help. "I want to see him."

Steve's response was cross, as if he had only just realised why she didn't get in the jet – she would have to be sneakier to get away from him in future. "No, Aerla, he needs to calm down."

"He's going to hurt himself."

"He knows what he's doing."

"Actually, Cap, he does look a little worse for wear," Stark commented dubiously.

Worry and self-assuredness spurred Aerla on; if Bruce needed aid then she would give it. She had spent a millennium wishing for understanding, for moments where her sorcerous fur wouldn't be seen as an abomination. Bruce did not have magic in his veins, he was a modern day human who lived for science, but he had welcomed her. He was another chink in her ancient armour, like Phil and the others through the years, and Aerla couldn't help but treasure it. "I'll help him."

"Aerla-"

Stark interrupted Steve's agitated beseeching, "He's limping, be careful. He needs to turn back."

"I'll lead him away; you'll have to deal with what he leaves behind."

"Fine. And kid? Remember, he won't know you."

That last statement was troubling, it was the second time she had heard it now, but then Steve started fiercely arguing with Stark and Aerla made a rash decision. "Jarvis?" The soft beep that responded let her know that only the AI was listening. "I might need to do something drastic; keep it off the cameras for me, please? I'll need to leave you somewhere."

"Be careful, ma'am."

"Amazing, Jarvis." If worst came to the worst, the modern technology would not work with her ancient magic, and it would just lead Stark straight to her. Aerla could not risk exposing her other half, not to anyone that didn't have an other half of their own.

Aerla hurried down the road, following the screeches of destruction. A green giant punched ineffectually at a swarm of birds, hitting only one and sending it hurtling into a gore-spattered wall. Another took its place almost instantaneously but this time a red and gold figure appeared alongside to distract the throng - Stark was backing her up.

Aerla whistled loudly and had to tamp down the urge to flee when furious eyes turned on her, but then she remembered that distraction was the point. She needed to get Bruce somewhere safe and away from watching eyes. Inclining her head in the direction she had come, she started to run, panic racing its way up her legs when booms were all too fast approaching. Large warehouses lined the street's edge and one looked hastily abandoned, its shutter left invitingly open.

Veering in, Aerla scrambled to hide behind some cargo and waited for her pursuer to become the pursued. Roars shook the walls and she stepped out with her hands up, like a foolish human against a snarling animal. Aerla masked her fear, she had spent enough time amongst wolves to know how enticing fear was; it always served to make her blood pump in anticipation and she rather wanted it to stay in her veins.

There was one colossal problem with this - what suddenly seemed - quite haphazard plan; the thing that stood in front of her was not Bruce. If she had thought that their creatures were similar, she now knew that she was extremely wrong. This wasn't just another form, it was another  _person_ ; the literal Mr Hyde to Bruce's Dr Jekyll. But the man she liked was in there somewhere. 

_Well, too late now, in for a penny._

"Easy, big guy, you're limping."

Aerla flinched against the responding rumble but pointed at his leg and the dark liquid that seeped from it. He must have picked up more injuries when she had returned to Steve because blood covered him from head to toe, but she wasn't sure whether it was his or not.

"Your leg," Aerla reiterated with enforced calm. "It's hurt; you need to check on it."

Wariness and such distressing anger radiated from him, but amazingly he stopped to glance at the damage, proving that he could listen to reason –  _screw you, SHIELD_. He brushed his huge fingers in his blood and a fresh wave of fury exploded from him, as if he had just realised how hurt he was. Massive fingers clutched at the wound and he bellowed in pain.

Something vulnerable stared at her from those aggrieved, alarming eyes. Her wolf rolled against it, trying to soothe the beast, but there was no magic in Bruce. There was no comforting rub like her land replied when it was disturbed, he was only a human.

"Just shift back," she pleaded, needing to stop his pain and anxiety.

Vulnerability turned to rage and she knew the emotion. It screamed of misunderstanding, that she could never know how difficult it was to be trapped inside another body. Aerla didn't know it to his extent; she was as much a wolf as she was a human, whereas Bruce and this green beastie were apparently two isolated beings. They might be able to work together at times, but they must be constantly fighting for control.

He lumbered towards her and Aerla fell to her knees as she surrendered to the urge to cringe towards the floor. Submission in the face of strength served its purpose, because he halted. This soul must be old if it responded to such an instinctual reaction,he was a dominant force and her exposure proved to pacify him. 

_Fascinating, but we're running out of time._

His chest was still heaving but he simply stared at her, suspicion and doubt on his harsh face. Aerla spoke quickly and kept her eyes downcast. "I know it's hard, I know what it's like to have something else in your head, but it doesn't have to be a constant struggle. You are two halves of a whole, accept it."

He bared his teeth at her and she finally knew what it felt like to see it.  _Feral and intimidating._ Aerla was better at dealing with tricky wordsmiths like Stark than she was with brute force, but she understood control better than anyone. "You need to change; we can't fix the wound in that form."

His doubt intensified and seemed to edge on anger so Aerla reverted to her last, desperate option.

And yet she knew that she had already made the decision when they had treated Bruce like he was the bad guy. "Please, give him back."

Her fur frantically exploded out of her skin, but she remembered to keep her stomach close to the ground as she risked looking up at him.

A shocked Bruce appeared and flopped to the floor.

Aerla sighed in relief as she padded over to him and sniffed his foot. Bruce was absolutely coated in blood but the transformation was strange, he didn't seem as affected by the wounds. Aerla's transposed onto her other skin, stretched or shrunk accordingly, but the wound was always the same. It was almost as if Bruce truly contained a separate presence, and at times became contained by it.

"Aerla?"

Aerla sat on her haunches and huffed a laugh at his shaky question. Her ear twitched at a recognisable arc-powered noise so she hurriedly shifted again, thanking the stars that she had been able to flex her strained magic the night before. Bruce tried to crawl backwards as he watched her toothy grin remain between forms. "Our secret, Bruce"

His eyes were as wide as saucers but he nodded dumbly, his head turning to see Stark come streaming in.

"Why was your ear piece outside, kid?"

Aerla scoffed at the nickname and to distract him from Bruce's disbelieving expression; the doctor was clearly trying to put all of the pieces together but didn't know how they worked. Aerla held her hand out to the hovering man. "Give, and get Clint to bring the jet, Bruce needs a stretcher."

Stark watched her with calculating eyes but landed to hand over her piece of tech. She popped it back in and smiled as it felt  _right_  back in her ear again, especially when Jarvis gave her an update on what had happened in an almost approving tone. The male was missing and the horde was airborne. She could find it easily enough later, for now she wanted to get Bruce to a medic.

"Jarvis, you continue to amaze me."

"You know,  _I_  was the one who invented him."

Aerla grinned at Stark's astute - if quite jealous - observation but pursed her lips when Bruce focused on her teeth. The doctor seemed confused and incredulous, although that might just be blood loss and shock. Aerla trusted Bruce and she had never been proven completely wrong in the past, but he would have questions that she was still not prepared to answer.

Only now was she beginning to doubt her decision.

But despite the ingrained discomfort of discovery, Aerla felt immensely pleased. Bruce wasn't dead and she had helped him shift. She had not become bitter over her long life and left him to his lonely agony, instead she had shared a lifetime of control.  _I am not a monster, and neither is he._

"I can walk-" Bruce started and tried to get up, but Aerla held a soothing hand on his shoulder.

"Easy, we can discuss can's and cannot's later. For now, we need to finish up and, er,  _dispose_ of the last one."

Stark looked over attentively, knowing that Aerla wanted another alien in SHIELD's hands even less than he did. Aerla tried to radiate comfort because Bruce was still looking at her strangely, and then thankfully he slowly relaxed-  _Oh, no, he's passed out._

She pushed her fingers through the congealing blood and touched his throat, relieved to feel a steady beat. At least this would delay the discussion they would have to have, if he remembered any of it. She was starting to hope that he wouldn't. Aerla nervously looked at a bored Stark. "He's fine, does he normally do this?"

"Yeah, he'll be out for a bit."

Aerla thanked the  _nornir_  that she didn't need to recuperate each time that she shifted; it seemed to be a serious disadvantage. Instead, she enjoyed the crackles of energy that pinged under her skin as she checked Bruce more thoroughly for injuries. They were mostly consistent, but it was as if the healing process had been expedited and then halted suddenly –  _could he only regenerate in his other form?_

Straightening, Aerla took a moment to absent-mindedly observe the naked man collapsed on the floor and absorb what had just happened. "So... That was pretty cool."

Stark tilted his head in amused surprise as he turned fully towards her and flared his hands. "I know, right? The Hulk deserves more credit."

Aerla wanted to laugh; they both shared a view for once, and it was one that no one else seemed to echo. ' _The Hulk'_ , it was a good name for him, large but not necessarily with bad intent. Aerla looked deliberatively at the mess around the room. "He didn't hurt me."

"Probably a good thing, he turned Loki into some floor tiles for my tower."

Wincing as she remembered those colossal hands mere feet away from her fragile skull, she pitied the god of mischief. Bruce began to shiver at her feet so Aerla cast about for a covering but couldn't find anything.

Stark noticed and said idly, "They're on their way."

"Tell them to hurry up," Aerla grumbled at his unconcern. They didn't even have a jacket between them to warm him up.

"You going with them?"

"And leave you to get the kill? I think not."

Stark's lip twitched at her haughty statement and between them they managed to carefully carry Bruce outside. Only when the doctor was safely in the quinjet would she resume the hunt.

 

* * *

 

"Stop flying so far away, I can't reach."

Stark surprised her by immediately twisting and bringing the swarm closer, enabling her to get a few good shots off before they sped away again.

The only problems with that arrangement were the ashes that fluttered into her eyes and the precious seconds wasted to blink them away. Taking another to check on the distant point of pain – weak, but still alive – she had to rush to wipe her face and notch another arrow as Stark flew past again.

Steve had tasked the two of them with clearing up as he and the agents took Bruce back to the helicarrier. The Captain had looked between them and ordered "no fooling around", to which they had both rolled their eyes. There hadn't been any time for it though, for every smaller alien Aerla downed, Stark managed to attract another to fill its place.

It seemed endless.

"I could get better shots if I were higher, where's the quinjet when I need it?" Aerla mused out loud, wondering why Clint hadn't stayed to help. Perhaps two were needed to pilot the craft, or maybe something more sinister and feminine was at work. It was a speculation to brood over later, when she wasn't choking on alien dust.

"Who needs a jet when you have ' _rocket boots'_?" Stark muttered sarcastically and making Aerla laugh; she  _knew_  that he had been annoyed at Steve's simplified remark.

_Wait, what did he just say?_

Aerla lowered her bow to see the pursued Iron Man suit fly rather more towards her than usual. "You're joking, right? Glow?" He didn't respond and neither did he change course. Her nervous chuckling turned to distress. "No, no, no, I can't fly, Stark. Damn it! Stark!" Aerla thrust her bow into her quiver and held up her palms to ward him off, in a frustratingly familiar fashion to earlier with the Hulk.

A blast of air and heat hit Aerla when he flipped his thrusters to slow down, and then metal encircled her tightly. "Stop, I don't have wiiiings!" She was airborne, half clutching onto the Iron Man suit, and half kicking Stark in the shins as he took her higher and higher.

"Please remain seated at all times," his amused tones came through his helmet.

"Screw you!" Aerla shouted into the wind and tried to knee him in the crotch. Skyscraper roof appeared beneath her and then he smoothly deposited her onto the closest one. Aerla sprawled and hugged the tiles, promptly deciding that flying was fucking terrifying, but knowing that she was going to need to do it again to get down.

Moaning pitifully, Aerla tensed when her terrified senses picked up a flapping noise. She flipped over and drew her bow to shoot past Stark before he could turn, the alien puffing into powder right behind his head.

He didn't even bother looking at his now ashy assailant, just flipped his visor up to nod at her. "I'll bring them to you."

_Great._

Aerla decided that she was never going to think out loud again.

  



	13. Standoffs and Stances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerla knew how sharing would end; it would end as it always had, with fire, or swords, or gunshots. Things might be different now but she could depend on humans to be humans, they never truly changed. They would always fear things that they didn't understand, and magic was never meant to grace Earth's crust.

>   
> "Remember your name.  
>  Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found.  
>  Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped  
>  to help you in their turn.  
>  Trust dreams.  
>  Trust your heart, and trust your story.  
>  When you come back, return the way you came.  
>  Favors will be returned, debts will be repaid.  
>  Do not forget your manners.  
>  Do not look back."
> 
> \- Neil Gaiman,  _Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders,_ 'Instructions'

 

Fury found her tallying a ridiculous pile of red feathers on her counter as Stark occasionally blew at it to send them flurrying and confusing her.

Aerla half expected to find the damn things in her clothes for the next week, having shoved them in as many places as she possibly could after she had stripped the male alien's bedraggled corpse. It hadn't decomposed when she and Stark had taken it down depressingly easily - her earlier arrow had burrowed too far into its brain and presumably pierced something important.

Aerla wasn't a glutton for punishment, but she had rather wanted a larger battle to end the day. Instead, all she had were dying shrieks and a lot of possible fletching.

It turned out to be a lot like preparing pheasant, but bigger and far more fascinating.

Once she had started trying to put the feathers into Stark's helmet, he had demanded that they do something about the body. She had remembered seeing Bruce tear the female apart, but even their combined force couldn't obliterate the gigantic creature, so Aerla had resorted to old tactics.

She had stabbed it in the heart.

Stark had caught her before she could fall into the pile of fresh ash, and then immediately forced her into the sky. The third time around had been far better, and she had even been able to keep her eyes open for long enough to appreciate it.

That did not mean that Aerla had forgiven the arrogant, sadistic, bastard for scaring the ever-living daylights out of her though, which was why he kept disturbing her claret-coloured hoard as she pointedly ignored him.

"Can somebody tell me  _why_  Dr Banner was on the ground today?" Fury's pedantic voice still managed to make Aerla's hackles rise, so she didn't give him the satisfaction of her complete attention when he stormed into the control room.

Neither did Stark as he idly blew at her pile again. The two of them shared a look that said 'fuck SHIELD', and then Steve and the agent duo were close on the director's heels. Fury had evidently scoured them for information but came up wanting, and so he had been forced to come to his  _favourite_  people.

"I had Banner on back-up," Clint put in, which made Aerla wince in his defence as Fury turned on him.

"Were  _you_  the one who called him down?"

Clint paused for a moment and then shook his head, which made Steve straighten and throw himself on the fire for her. "It was my fault, sir. I wasn't paying attention." 

 _Ah, damn it._ Now she felt bad.

Stark was watching her with a glint in his eye, and it was as if he knew that she was feeling guilty and was silently mocking her for it. Aerla ignored him and announced her readiness for verbal abuse. "I called him."

The glint turned into pure amusement and Stark rolled his eyes at her. Aerla continued to ignore him. Fury slammed his hands down on her counter when she didn't look up, and it sent her treasures fluttering to the floor.

"And who gave you permission to do so?"

Aerla frowned at her fallen feathers but didn't stoop to pick them up, instead stroking the one still tucked behind her ear. Steve watched her with unease and she was warmed by his attempted sacrifice –  _stop smirking, Stark._  "No one."

"Then why'd you do it?"

Aerla shrugged, knowing that it would annoy Fury, and that in itself made her wonder when exactly she had decided that she really disliked SHIELD's director. It had been a probable thing when he dealt in information rather than loyalty, but how he treated Bruce had confirmed it. Aerla did not like tyrants. "I thought we needed back-up."

Fury scowled at her, more so than usual; his one eye conveying enough anger to light a small, patchy fire. "He could have run amok."

"He didn't though, did he?"

"And that's a first for him, so you tell me  _exactly_ what happened down there."

It wasn't the first time, though _;_ Fury was intentionally disregarding Bruce's help against the Chitauri. Without him and the Hulk, the Leviathans and Loki would have been near impossible to take down, and Stark would have fallen to his death after he disposed of the nuke. They were heroes, and Aerla wondered how Fury expected her to reveal all when he so easily vilified their strongest member.

"How the Hell should I know? I lost him in the warehouse and then he was bleeding all over the place," Aerla lied easily and funnelled some of her remembered fear into the statement. It was a useful trick, but Fury wasn't convinced. His jaw clenched and he leaned into her personal space.

"Well, maybe you should find out, because he keeps asking for you and he won't say why," Fury's order was acerbic and trying to intimidate, it made Aerla's temper flare. It was one thing to follow Steve's well-meaning commands, but Fury treated her like a dog.  _H_ e _has nothing on me –_ especially not when he was a man down and needed her firepower.

"Or what, Fury?" Aerla snapped as she stalked out of the stunned silence to nip this whole thing in the bud.  _By the stars_ , she hoped Bruce was groggy, or this might go really bloody badly.

Steve caught up with her stomping before she could go far and touched her arm to make her stop. Aerla was expecting a reprimand or at least a request for Bruce's information, but she was pleasantly surprised when Steve looked merely concerned, asking, "You okay, or do I need to take you to the med bay too?"

Aerla smiled wryly and indicated for him to walk alongside her. "You're very funny, but no, thank you. I'll check on Bruce, see if he remembers anything, and then I'll… I don't know, bother Stark?"

Steve's cheek almost dimpled in amusement and then he nodded at her left hand. "You should come by the training room again, work up the sprained muscle."

For a moment, Aerla faltered, her mind tripping over the events of yesterday to recall her dislocated wrist and the wince she had accidentally shown Steve. In the heat of the moment he might forget that Stark was reckless, but the Captain remembered his allies' weaknesses and worked on bettering them, because he  _cared_. After Fury's cold reception and worse management, Aerla was reminded how ideal a leader Steve could be.

"All to defend Earth, Cap," Aerla quoted their conversation from yesterday with a grin that he mirrored with a self-conscious duck of his head. "Sure, I'll see you in ten."

"See that you do." He sobered so fast that her humour dimmed, until she caught the almost-dimple again.  _He's playing with me, wow, off-duty Steve is fun._

He nodded to dismiss her, the military captain once more, so she pushed him affectionately on the shoulder and brushed past. "I saluted once already, that's your daily quota."

"I'll start counting."

"See that you do," she sang down the hallway and savoured the warm fuzzies from their little tête-à-tête. Aerla valued fealty over most things, and although Cap might consider Fury worth his oaths, she thought that she might be climbing Steve's ranks.

It was where she was meant to be, after all.

The med bay was empty and coolly clinical in comparison to the friendly banter that she had just left. Only one room was closed off so she made a beeline for it, pausing by the door to speak to the ceiling. "Jarvis, it's going to be another one of those times."

"May I suggest some normal conversation first and then pretend to leave?"

He would keep the clip up and hide the rest;  _will he ever stop amazing me?_ "Smart, I'll do just that, thanks."

"You're welcome, ma'am."

Aerla slipped through the opening door and disliked how Bruce tensed at the sight of her. Purposefully looking at the cameras, she tried to tell him to act normal for a bit longer. If his trepidation was any indication, he knew something was up, but if they could blag their way through some security footage, she could deal with his fallout in relative peace.

"How are you feeling?" She asked casually and eyed the copious bandages that covered large areas of his body, finding them remarkably sloppy. He looked the image of an impatient invalid, although the frown on his face might be because he could see her teeth in his mind's eye.

"Better, just discomfort now," he answered carefully and absent-mindedly rubbed his poorly wrapped wounds.

"No pain relief?"

"No, I'm not fond of it."

"Same, too foggy," she agreed, and Bruce nodded slowly so she tugged lightly at some of the slack on his bindings. "These are awful."

He gave a small, surprised smile. "I know, they wouldn't let me do them myself either."

"Amateurs, but you're okay?"

"Yes, thank you."

"I'm glad, feel better." Aerla got up and made out to walk away from him, stopping when Jarvis murmured an assent in her ear. "Okay, we're good."

"What happened?" Bruce asked immediately, apparently taking no notice of how she would keep this from SHIELD.

"What do you remember?"

Bruce's brow furrowed as if he could tell she was dancing around the issue. "I was on my way down, but then I heard you ask for a distraction. The next clear moment was waking up here… Though there are some hazy ones."

He focused discerningly on her and she repressed the impulse to fidget,  _he remembered_.

Everything could ride on this conversation. A fervent part of her wanted to divulge everything, wanted to again release the secret that had been burning a hole in her soul for a millennium. Self-preservation battled the longing and instead urged her to hide, to run, lest everything she had waited for crumble away when she was  _so damned close_.

Aerla knew how sharing would end; it would end as it always had, with fire, or swords, or gunshots. Things might be different now but she could depend on humans to be humans, they never truly changed. They would always fear things that they didn't understand, and magic was never meant to grace Earth's crust.

But she was long-lived, had power and heritage beyond shouldn't she help out someone of similar ability, someone with a shared persecution? It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and Aerla always took advantage of those. Maybe she could tell just one more person. That might be okay, she could control one more person knowing, if it meant that she could help him.

Besides, what was Bruce going to do, tell on her?

"You're a mutant, aren't you?"

 _Mutant?_ For a split second Aerla was offended, but she tamped her wolf's indignant reaction down and thought about how useful that term might be. A biologically modified mortal she was not, but she knew enough about them to pretend to be one. Was being a mutant more acceptable than magic? _Nowadays, yes._ They could be explained by science, and humans understood science; magic was a feared myth from the dark ages.

Aerla couldn't be sure that they wouldn't put her back on the pyre.

Bruce continued before she could decide whether to encourage or deny the accusation, "Does anyone else know?"

That was a question she could easily answer. "You're the second."

"Wow."

"Yeah." _Of t_ _he only two still alive, anyway._

Bruce thought it amazing for her apparent age, but he didn't know that she had chosen only three in the last century,  _or had it been longer?_  Aerla hardly remembered anymore, could only assume that it had been a while because it had been too shatteringly easy to shift in front of him, in front of Phil.

It was only the fervent desire to live that had kept her skill such a well-kept secret, but every now and again, far less than the occurrence of the blue moon, she wanted to tell someone. A friend, a lover, a loner; what had been the harm? Aerla wanted companionship and all too soon they would take her secret to the grave.

It had taken nearly a whole chiliad of years for her first willing reveal, and that one had been too strange and upsetting to experience again. But as if fate had been taunting her, she had finally known what it was like to have someone look at her fur without horror, and so the longing to share had grown. Then with her failure still fresh and starlight on his skin, she had told Phil everything.

It was trust that formed the basis, that bittersweet force that told her everything would be okay, that forgot how much it hurt to be castigated for existing. Maybe she trusted too easily, but as she had told Steve, life was too painful not to.

Aerla had only been encouraged when Phil had taken it so well. But that was Phil, he was built to withstand weird shit like her, it was why he was so good at his job. And although Bruce only knew the tip of the iceberg, he thought he recognised something in her, had thought so ever since she had hinted it was true when they had first met.

It suddenly hit Aerla that two people knew, two well-connected humans who could all too easily share her earliest truth. Deep-rooted fear ran a trembling course along her bones. Her dream of rejection played afresh in her mind and made her hands quake, so she busied them to hide it, pulling a fresh roll of bandages from a table and carefully removing Bruce's abysmal ones.

He put a hand out to hold the spool and they worked in pensive silence as Aerla neatly tied each one off until they fit snugly around his strangely diminished wounds. It helped to do something that she knew so well, Aerla could remember doing this in the light of a campfire when all she had was heat and dirty rags.

When she stepped back, Bruce ran a tentative hand over the rough fabric. "It's strange; the other guy normally heals before I come back."

Apprehension still sat along her shoulders but she couldn't help being interested. He wasn't wary anymore and instead he was offering information that Fury might kill for. Bruce's trust was humbling and so she was honest with him. "Regen, that makes two of us. How does yours work?"

Bruce hesitated, presumably because she was talking about it as if it was an everyday occurrence, but she wanted him to feel like this was  _normal_. He clutched for words that would be as calm as hers, "I think the angrier the other guy gets, the stronger he becomes."

Aerla thought that the Hulk's defence mechanisms were really unfortunate. If he wasn't angry, he couldn't heal. It was almost as bad as passing out when he shifted shape. "Ah, that might be my fault, apologies."

"Apologies?"

"Yeah, I shocked you."

Laughing softly, Bruce reasoned, "Well, it was either that or something worse. So I guess I should thank you."

"Any time, Bruce."  _Your green beastie knows me now._

Bruce picked up on her lack of fear and a look of bitter amazement crossed his face. "You can control it, can't you?"

Aerla's mouth opened to deny everything but she held back, leaped for the chance to explain to someone that might finally understand a little better. Phil had listened attentively but he couldn't empathise, and here was someone who could.

"I was born this way." A slight over-simplification, but it wasn't important, not to anyone but her.

"How?"

"It's hard to explain."

"Please," Bruce asked with such desperation that it rocked her. Aerla numbly grasped that she had achieved the control that he strived for every single day, but they were too different and she was too old. Time had been her teacher, and it killed a little part of her to know that she couldn't help him with that. So she divulged what came so naturally she could barely understand it herself.

"There's fur under my skin, claws in my fingertips. It's like a muscle that sparks with pleasure when you flex it… But it's separate; it sits in my chest and rides my mind."  _It's magic; my legacy, my loyalty, and my bloody aggression._

"So it's not symbiotic, you're conscious when you're…"

Aerla laughed under her breath and tilted her head in amusement. "I  _am_ a wolf, Bruce. I'm just one that can choose how many legs I walk on."

Bruce mouthed the word 'wolf', his mind clearly whirring with implications. There was absolutely no guardedness in his posture any more, only a scientist's keen interest. "How did you find me?"

"I didn't, you chased me." Bruce flinched guiltily and Aerla rushed to explain, "No, I taunted you, drew you away from the others."

Bruce clearly thought that she was mad and sounded almost angry at her irresponsibility. "Why would you do that, I told you he wouldn't know you."

"How was I to know you worked differently from me? I thought you just changed shape." She scoffed at the memory, "Realised that mistake when I looked into your eyes."  _Such distressed, angry eyes._ Bruce seemed interested in her opinion but his incredulity overrode it.

"Why didn't you run?"

"Aside from knowing full well how enticing fleeing prey can be" Aerla tried to get him to join in her humour, but he simply stared, so she finished lamely, "I wanted to help."

"Why?"

"So many needless questions, Bruce," Aerla replied with a nervous laugh as she hastily stood and turned away, knowing that she was not answering herself as well as him.

"Why, Aerla?"

Empathised rage tainted her words as she whirled on him, "Because I didn't like the way Steve looked at you when you ran past, how pissed Fury was when you came down; you were helping, did what we couldn't, and they still act like you would be better off in a cell."

_And what does that mean they would do to me?_

Remarkably, Bruce calmed immediately. "I'm glad someone else finally sees it."

Aerla's anger was replaced with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Stark sees it, the people you saved in New York see it, don't forget that. SHIELD's just scared of you."

Bruce was quietly contemplative for a moment. "I'm assuming you don't want me to tell the others."

"You assume correctly." He gave her a questioning look, so she tried to push her hands through her hair, dislodging her already messy braid. "Look, would you have told anyone if you could help it?"

The doubt on his face told her that no, he would have taken his secret to the ends of the Earth,  _and I could._  But she hadn't, had chosen to share hers to help him, despite knowing that she only had herself to fall back on if it all came out, just like always.

Aerla was anxious again, not wanting to contemplate another facet of distraction that was named the Avengers when the end of her journey was so near. She tried to leave but hesitated when Bruce murmured a quiet thank you.

"For trusting you or for fixing those awful bandages?"

A small smile lit his face. "Both."

Aerla sighed at how easily she forgot her life's goal when she spent time with humans. She had lived for far too long to not want to cling to shows of kindness, especially from people whom she admired and who might admire her in return.

She knew she was starting to enjoy herself too much. Aerla had deliberately stayed away from friendships with mortals and their upsettingly short lives and it had hurt. She was a social animal at heart but couldn't bear any more deaths, not when each one still weighed heavily on her soul like a grievous mark.

Now she had opened up again, dipped her toe in the ocean of humanity and liked it too much. Aerla wanted to challenge Clint, pick Stark's brain, trade literature quotes with Bruce, test Steve's strength; wanted to defend Earth alongside them all. They made her want to scream in confusion and despair.

_Why, why do I have a human's heart when I belong to the stars?_

"Why did you come down?" Aerla wanted Bruce to say something selfish, something that would dissuade her from this kinship so that she could easily leave at a moment's notice, wouldn't consider their opinions so vitally important.

"You asked me," Bruce answered too quickly.

"No, you were coming before that."

He sighed and looked at her meaningfully. "It's not my story to tell."

He was implying that her secret shared the same weight and it only confirmed the compulsion to rely on him. Resting her forehead against the wall, Aerla soaked in Bruce's calm energy and tried to make him understand, because his opinion did matter. "You know better than anyone else on this ship that people don't take kindly to shifters."

"Shifters?" Bruce tasted the word and apparently deemed it acceptable. "You're right, but if you can control it-"

"-But nothing. Even without your intelligence and Stark's back up, your other half could crush all of them, they're terrified of you. For all the damage I can do, I'm better at hiding than crushing; it's easier for me to stay in the shadows." Aerla liked it there, it was safe and familiar, hid her from the rest of the world and any targets that she hunted.

"Were you ever going to say something?"

"When I first came on board, no, but then the aliens,"  _and Steve worrying about magic made me feel so guilty,_ "and you; it was bound to come up at some point." Aerla shrugged grudgingly.

"I wouldn't blame you for staying silent," he said ever-so-tiredly, and Aerla lifted her head to stare at him in weary surprise. "If I had the choice…"

Hearing that word reminded her of something Steve had said. "Is it different when you're forced to shift?"

When Aerla retreated back to his bed, he pinched the bridge of his nose as he spoke, "Sometimes it's easier when I just let it happen, rather than fight back."

"Was it choice or force this time?"

Bruce looked away, almost shamefaced for some reason. "You scared me when you asked for help, for a distraction."

"I.. forced you?" Horrified guilt made her falter, and his wince was a  _'yes'._

For the first time, Aerla was confronted with someone else whose power manipulated them, power that _she_ had accidentally manipulated. But to black out for periods of time - and such destructive times - made her feel sorry for them both. "Can you feel him now?"

Bruce looked at her over his fingers and seemed to debate internally over something. "Yes."

"Why did you hesitate?"

"I don't normally talk about it."

"People just don't understand, eh?" Aerla said with a wry and considerably bitter smile, Bruce returned a similar one, but there was relief in there too. He changed to deliberative as his eyes flicked over her relaxed stance.

"That's why you seem so different," he began with satisfied curiosity, and Aerla stiffened at a scientist's study of her personality. "Sometimes you drop in and out of character, Tony's noticed it too. It's because you're constantly both halves, isn't it?"

 _The frowns, the calculating looks, had I been so obvious?_ He was right, and that was alarming. She managed to murmur, "Character?"

Bruce hummed in agreement. "Have you not seen how Steve reacts differently to you, each time you see him?"

When she numbly shook her head, he explained, "You'll walk in and you might be timid, happy to obey, and he'll ease up and stand by you, effectively taking off his metaphorical hat. But then other times you'll stride in and seem more comfortable, insistent and, er, toothy."

When a laugh was startled out of her at that apt description, Bruce grinned and continued, "He straightens, practically salutes; it's like you're his officer or something."

Now that Aerla thought about it, she could see what he meant; the way Steve worried about her with one breath and then accepted her orders with another. She was doing what she had always feared, destabilising the pack. "I don't fit into this easy hierarchy."

"You do when you're being whatever it is that makes you submit."

When she let a wolf's knowledge of submission take over. "It's an old part of me, I understand order, and it's useful to fall into occasionally."

"Why?"

"Because the meek don't get noticed and the mighty have cells built for them," she teased and Bruce grimaced in reluctant amusement. "Okay, well, I was halfway through a rather magnificent collection of feathers before Fury sent me over, so-"

"Does he know?"

Aerla levelled a sceptical look at him. "Only two people know, and you think Fury is the other? Please, give me some credit."

Bruce smiled and thankfully gathered that she would not tell him who the second person was. "Are you going to tell Tony?"

"I am doing my best to keep it from him of all people," she said with tired amusement. "Scientists are the worst at secrets, I only told you because you need to know that Stark isn't the only one who thinks your 'other guy' is pretty cool."

Bruce actually frowned. "I think I'm insulted at your scientists jab and frustrated that you've sided with Tony over this."

"Hey, we need something to agree on every now and again, be pleased that it's over you." He rolled his eyes but matched her smile and she finally felt calm enough to leave him. "Ask Jarvis to call me if you need anything."

"We aren't talking any more then?" Bruce chuckled as she headed for the door.

"Ask me no questions, doc, and I'll tell you no lies," she called back, pleased with the acceptance on his face. That had gone remarkably the first time in a long while, an iota of pressure had eased off of her shoulders.

It felt quite good.

 

* * *

 

 Fury collared her on the way to the training room, and unfortunately he did it in the middle of the bridge where only busy SHIELD agents surrounded her.

_Not a friendly face in sight, damnit._

Fury must have arranged it that way, so that she had no back up and couldn't count on Stark or Bruce to help her out. Even Clint was nowhere to be seen, but whether the agent would stand up to Fury for her was a matter still in debate.

Aerla had started seeing the Avengers as a separate entity from SHIELD, for all one existed within the other. Clint and Romanova were agents, and at the end of the day they were Fury's, even if Aerla was harbouring a soft spot for her fellow archer.

It perturbed her that someone like Clint was so easily led, and by his baser instincts no less.  _No, that wasn't fair_. She had no idea what resided between the pair, only that it seemed to distract Clint from what he thought was right. Aerla was no judge on life-decisions, but she would have liked someone to back her up against Fury's angry eye.

The director was decidedly not impressed with her explanation of Bruce's shockingly unfortunate memory. Aerla had a feeling that he wouldn't like any of her answers, actually; especially as she and Stark had taken great pains to destroy absolutely every alien that had fouled the sky.

"What happened to the last one?"

Aerla leaned against a railing and tried not to get distracted by the window – they were invisible again. "It went poof."

"Then how do you explain that?" Fury jerked his head at her ear and she pulled her feather out to look at it dubiously.

"He moulted first?"

Fury's jaw clenched, but really what could he say? No one else had seen what had happened, and she had been doing her job and defending the planet. However, he still looked ready to physically throw her off of the helicarrier and merely pretend that she had left.

Distraction marched by in the form of a time-checking Steve; Aerla had been longer than the arranged ten minutes and her saviour had come looking for her. She appealed to him with distressed eyes, feeling a little guilty for doing so. She didn't want to think that Bruce was right about her screwing up Cap's healthy structure.

Steve was quickly becoming a fixture in her life and, like the sun, she wanted to bask in his inherent warmth.

Her armour was buckling almost quicker than she could cope.

Kind-hearted concern crossed Steve's face and then he completed their triangle with an off-topic question to divert Fury. SHIELD's director ignored him for a tense few seconds and she could read everything from it. He knew that she was using Steve for a shield, and Fury saw how readily the soldier had come to save her from his wrath.

Fury was a fool, he might think that he knew everything about the helicarrier's occupants, but he was a dictator. He could use and abuse them, knew how to motivate them, and it meant that some of them might be all too happy to side against him if the opportunity arose.

Aerla would not let Fury manipulate the humans that she was beginning to call friends, not when Phil was still alive and his death still lingered guiltily on all of their minds. She would not have the Avengers be taken advantage of. Not Stark with his weapons knowledge, Bruce with his other half of pure strength, nor Steve with his unbending loyalty.

As if the time-lost military man knew her thoughts, Steve eased his stance and it brought him ever-so-slightly closer to Aerla's side. To anyone else it might have meant nothing, but in the midst of wary unions, it signified everything. Aerla showed Fury her teeth in a dangerous smile, it said 'watch your back'.

Because the Avengers had hers, as she had theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and exquisite bandage-tying, are all mine.


	14. Escapes and Scapegoats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foreign power slithered over Loki's skin and captured his magic in an impenetrable shield, sending his physical form hurtling towards a pathetic green-and-blue planet that did not have what he sought.

>   
> "You are aware of only one unrest;  
>  Oh, never learn to know the other!  
>  Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,  
>  And one is striving to forsake its brother.  
>  Unto the world in grossly loving zest,  
>  With clinging tendrils, one adheres;  
>  The other rises forcibly in quest  
>  Of rarefied ancestral spheres.  
>  If there be spirits in the air  
>  That hold their sway between the earth and sky,  
>  Descend out of the golden vapors there  
>  And sweep me into iridescent life."
> 
> \- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,  _'Faust: First Part'_

 

Aerla's quiver was too empty. Three days' worth of bird hunting had effectively slaughtered her arrows, and she was half a world away from more.

She had enough feathers –  _far too many actually, they were still everywhere_  – to fletch plenty, but no access to her vault or her tools. It hadn't crossed her mind at the time that she would still be here; even if she hadn't barrelled out of England, she wouldn't have been able to carry much else.

As Aerla debated on how she was going to replenish her stock with something that wouldn't set her magic on edge, Bruce called checkmate and sighed, "You know if you aren't going to pay attention…"

Aerla scowled at the lit-checked counter and noted at least three ways that she could have avoided losing so quickly. "I'm just letting you win."

Bruce snorted and scratched one of the fewer bandages that decorated his shoulders. It was a good thing that he hadn't broken any bones, because he had already been bustling about in the control room when she had woken up. Bruce was surprisingly resistant to pleas and demands, and bartered with her until she agreed to play chess with him as long as he  _sat the fuck down_.

It was at times like these that she wanted her magic to do more than make her shift shape, but that kind of power would forever be beyond her, no matter how much she longed for the ability to heal others. Aerla could deal death in one foul sweep of blade or claws, but the scales were weighed against her when it came to aiding life.

"Lose again, kid?" Stark asked from his counter, where he was busy doing something that she couldn't see. He had shuffled in scant minutes after her and the three of them had worked in comfortable silence since then. Bruce had given her a reassuring smile when she had shifted uneasily at the sight of the perceptive inventor, so she had refilled his coffee in paltry gratitude.

Humanity was pleasantly surprising her.

"You try playing him, I'm fairly certain he's a few steps ahead of me, and  _I'm_  already a few steps ahead of me." Bruce was crazy clever and currently far too pleased with himself. "Don't let it go to your head, I'm distracted."

"By what?" The victor asked as his eyes looked over her shoulder and she felt movement at her back.

 _Leather and plastic in the air;_ a strip of the latter was held in front of her and her magic growled at it. Aerla pretended to swoon. "For me?"

Clint smirked at her overly flattered tone as he relinquished his hold on a modern arrow. It was an updated version of hers, complete with navy fletching made of plastic instead of feathers. Someone had been keeping a considerate eye on her quiver control. "You were running low."

Stark sneered at them from across the room. "Is this like, your warped version of a rose, Barton?"

Clint didn't even gift Stark the benefit of his attention, so Aerla responded for him, "Don't be jealous, Glow, it doesn't suit you."

"Actually, I have everything I could ever want, jealousy is beneath me."

"Your life must be so difficult." Aerla gave him her best pitying look and Stark considered for a moment before nodding his head matter-of-factly.

Entertained, Aerla returned to Clint and tried not to show her innate distaste at the thoughtful gift. "This is a work of art, but I'm disgustingly picky when it comes to my weapons."

"Fair enough, what do you need?" Clint replied, ignoring Stark's mocking scoff, and immediately understanding the importance of arms pride. It didn't matter that the materials would literally make her skin crawl; it was merely a fellow archer's love for their craft.

"I knew I liked you, Cupcake." He grinned at her happy beam. "Consider me the vegetarian of materials, the closer to natural I can get, the better."

"Why?" Stark interjected, so she took a leaf out of Clint's book and ignored him.

"You don't want to try these first?" Clint held out a dozen more of the arrows and Aerla sighed inwardly. She would love to keep them, especially as they were probably perfect to a milligram, but they were far too contemporary to play nice with her fur.

"Try, I can do. But I would love something more organic, why do you think I kept the feathers?"

Bruce gave her a look that was both thoughtful and interested. "You made your arrows yourself?"

She murmured in assent as she watched Clint bring something up on one of the screens, and then he blinked in surprise when her counter changed from chessboard to his data –  _Thank you, Jarvis._

Aerla's eyes widened in delight as lists and percentages of materials appeared in front of her, and to think that she used to carve all of her shafts by hand.

Bruce sighed in exasperation, her attention fully taken from their game now. He headed to Stark who – Aerla noted with amusement – gave him a brief once over before asking his opinion on something. It seemed that she wasn't the only one concerned for Bruce's health.

"Wood?" Clint asked as he enlarged some possibilities and they mused over them together.

"Preferably. I can fletch them myself, but some broadheads would be nice."

Clint shook his head. "There's no need, I've got a system, but go bodkin, can never tell when something armoured will show up."

For a moment Aerla was thrown back to knights on horses but then whinnies turned into alien shrieks and she knew he was right.  _Not hunting game in the woods anymore, Aerla._

"Good call, what do you have that's simple?" Bone and flint would not do her much good in these times, and she had to take  _some_ advantage of SHIELD tech. Aerla eyed Clint's fancy quiver and wished that modernity didn't repel her so much. But she consoled herself with the thought that Clint couldn't run unseen through the shadows and take down prey with his teeth.

Of course, she couldn't do either at the moment.

Stark had been conferring with Bruce the entire time and he finally crossed his arms and appeared settled on something. The Iron Man suit was displayed in remarkable 3D on his counter and it looked like he had been highlighting pieces. "It needs looked at, I'm gonna go."

Aerla didn't take much note of the loud statement, but Clint stiffened, and then she remembered the wistful look on Stark's face when he had looked at his tower. Had he been unable to properly leave the helicarrier since Loki had arrived? Talk about a comfortable prison, they hadn't even let him fix his kit, no wonder he was so cranky.

Clint looked away from her counter to engage the inventor. "I thought you said you could last a bit longer."

"I could until I took a dive, can't wait, needs to be done," Stark sounded far too pleased to be messing with the archer.

"What am I meant to tell Fury?"

"Tell him I'm going off campus and I'll be back when I'm back."

Clint's jaw clenched at the taunt, so Aerla touched his arm to get his attention and looked at their notes. "I'll get back to you on these; I need to work out some percentages."

"Let me know, I'll put something together."

"Thanks, Cupcake." She didn't know why Stark disappearing was such a big deal, but evidently it would cause some uncomfortable ripples on Fury's end. Clint's input on her new arrows was valuable, and she was going to get it whether or not Stark wanted some attention.

Clint nodded and threw one last aggravated look at Stark before walking out of the room. Once he was gone Aerla rounded on the smug inventor. "What's up with your toy, Glow?"

Stark enlarged his screen to float between them and Aerla could see where he had been making updates and notes. "Aside from needing a serious paint job, only a general tune up, nothing serious."

Aerla shared a dubious look with Bruce who looked skywards. She wanted to laugh, Stark was such a liar and it was so obvious when you knew what to look for. They had fought alongside each other but he still wouldn't admit to any weakness; secretly she quite admired that.

It would do Stark some good to get away from SHIELD for a bit, even though with him gone they wouldn't have any flight capabilities. Aerla envied the chance to run on the ground without the fear of an alien clawing her face off, to try and put a slow on her growing affection for the Avengers.

"Want me to bring you back anything?" Stark asked condescendingly, as if he could tell what she had been thinking and wanted to rub his freedom in her face.

"More tea, I think I'm running through Jarvis's supply." Aerla replied with an affected sigh of desperation. The AI did some wizardry with her favourite daytime drink and she didn't want to start going without it.

Stark stared at her for a moment before turning to Bruce who shook his head and said, "No, thanks, once we're done here I'll probably be off anyway."

"What do you mean 'done here'?" Aerla questioned when Stark just grudgingly nodded. Phil had said that SHIELD had first called Bruce in only on a consultancy basis, but the doctor was an Avenger now and quite clearly an asset to the team. Would Fury send Bruce away just because he was scared of him?

Stark answered first, "We've been working on something Loki left us."

Aerla's hackles rose immediately and all that she could think of were the bitter tangs of Tesseract around the helicarrier. Was this the object that she had scented, was this why the smell wasn't fading when the starlight was?She glanced nervously between them, trying to remain nonchalant. "That sounds ominous, what is it?"

Bruce watched her incredibly carefully and it only made her more concerned. Stark shrugged and said, "His staff, well, the readings from it."

Aerla made a conscious effort not to flinch at the mere mention of Loki's weapon. She had seen video footage of what it had done to Clint and some of the others, it was  _wrong._  To control someone's mind was an abomination, to turn friend against friend was sick. That SHIELD was still in possession of it and the two smartest men that she knew were tinkering with it? That was terrifying.

Aerla managed to keep her voice neutral. "What have you found?"

"Nothing," Stark muttered as he still fiddled with his suit. "It works like the Tesseract, so there's gamma radiation, but that's not what we're looking for."

"No?" Aerla replied with forced idleness and wandered over to his counter, successfully putting Bruce off of the trail when he returned to his own screen.

"No, we're looking for  _magic,_ " Stark said with an absent-minded, sarcastic flourish of his hands. Aerla nearly retched and only by force of will didn't actually do so. Magic and technology were entirely different things, they were not meant to mix, originating from different planets as they did. As Stark was technology given human form, Loki was magic given godliness, and never the two shall meet.

In an ideal cosmos, anyway.

"Had any headway?"

Stark grumbled in response, "It's not exactly easy." 

 _Not for you,_  she almost said.Not for beings that relied on science instead of spells.

Bruce looked dissatisfied but unconcerned, as if to say that they had made no development whatsoever and neither were particularly keen on making any. HYDRA was a closer concern and they were just humans. There was no need to deal with celestial manipulation, not with Loki locked up. Aerla almost sagged in relief _,_  they weren't anywhere near manipulating magic. She realised with the brilliant clarity of hindsight that they had not even learned to track it, or they would have known her for her power the moment she had stepped foot on the helicarrier.

Aerla placed her palms on Stark's counter and was immensely relieved to see that he was still looking at his suit, and not working on whatever Fury wanted. If Bruce wasn't troubled and Stark was deliberately rebelling against the order, everything would be okay. The nauseating fear drifted away as she watched Stark's hands move. It was a good thing magic was so foreign to Earth, because if anyone was going to figure it out, it was Tony Stark.

He reminded her of a supercomputer, of Jarvis personified. His brain must be like a constantly sparking hub of power, making connections between things that no one else would ever notice. Stark saw a need and he invented a way, it was the most diligent form of laziness and it fascinated her. Aerla might be able to grasp what he was doing, but she didn't understand the intricacies, could only hedge an educated guess.

"You're rerouting some of the power?"

Stark's gestures hesitated for a moment and then he very nearly smiled at her perceptive observation. "Yeah, I don't want a repeat of last time; I'm putting reserves in for my boots."

"Clever," Aerla remarked and he snorted contemptuously, completely aware that his work was so much jargon to her. She could speak in languages that the sun had forgotten but science baffled her. As long as Stark built something that kept him from plunging beneath the water's surface again, she was happy, even if she didn't understand how it worked.

"So, Mr Sustainable Energy," she teased, using his words from their midnight drinking escapade. "How long is it going to take you to fix your suit?"

"Why," Stark said to his screen. "Are you gonna miss me?"

"I don't know whether the helicarrier will stay up without your ego," Aerla drawled, and Bruce laughed under his breath.

Stark scowled without looking up. "I liked it more here without you."

"No, you didn't, you were bored," Aerla said airily, noticing with delight how his lip twitched ever so slightly. She arrowed in on the back of his screen and poked a miniscule dent on his suit that he hadn't emphasised. "You missed a bit."

"Go away." Stark muttered as he rectified his mistake. "I thought it was 'perilous to study the ways of the enemy'?"

Aerla beamed at the grumpy man, because he had remembered _._ She wasn't the only one listening carefully to everything the other had to say _._ "It's ' _arts_ of the enemy', and for all your flaws, you aren't my enemy."

Stark tilted his head to the side in pretended deep thought. "I'm having trouble deciding whether that's an insult or a compliment."

"Both, I think," Bruce answered and Aerla laughed happily.  _Damn._  It dawned on her that she would miss Stark's cutting humour, and that was both strange and annoying. Her façade was faltering further and she was going to  _miss_ that arrogant man, how had that happened?

At least his absence would hopefully make her heart harder, or at least keep him away from the hidden camera footage. To be honest, Aerla was still surprised that she had woken up without a deadly threat in her ear and a gun to her head. It wasn't that she had stopped trusting Jarvis, more that she now knew Stark to be far too astute.

Aerla heard Clint before she saw him, so she was already watching the door when he appeared and impatiently motioned outside. She pushed away from the counter to join him, curiosity giving a skip to her step.

Clint radiated disquiet and he studied her for a moment before speaking. "Fury doesn't want Stark going on his own, if he does, he'll never come back. He'll come up with excuses and reasons but really he'll just be sitting in his tower and basically telling us to fuck off."

Why would he not want to come back, was Fury getting to him that much?  _Surely not, Stark was a big boy._ But if Fury really was pressuring him to make weapons and he didn't want to, it was hardly surprising. And if it meant that Stark wasn't playing with Loki's staff, the sooner she hoped he left.

Aerla had to ask a question that made her uncomfortable, because she wasn't sure whether she wanted to back Fury when it came to Stark. "Does Steve know about this?"

Clint paused, reading her alliance to the Avengers over SHIELD in her query, but not giving any indication as to what he thought of it. "Yeah, he was there, he agrees with Fury."

If Steve thought so too, Stark must be more of a tricky bastard than she had realised. Clint continued before she could ask any more questions. "Stark doesn't trust Natasha, I hate the guy, and Steve will just piss him off, so I suggested you."

Aerla blinked slowly. Suggested her for what, to go with Stark, to act as his chaperone? "Seriously?"

"Yeah, do you want to go?"

Aerla managed to refrain the  _'Hell yeah'_  that wanted to escape her lips. Not only would it mean that she could leave the helicarrier, but she would see more of Stark's inventions. It was possible that being away from SHIELD would mean that she could try and distance herself from humans once more, because she was starting to think more about them than she was about finding answers.

Aerla was fairly certain that there was no harm in trying Stark's whiskey in the meantime, though.

"Yes." She hid her excitement under cool nonchalance, but had to ask, "Not that I'm not grateful, but why me?"

"I trust you," Clint said simply, putting the confirming cap on their tenuous friendship. Warm delight made her smile in stupefaction.

"Oh. Thanks."

Clint shrugged as if it was nothing, as if he hadn't vouched for her in front of Fury and Romanova. "Don't mention it. You'll leave whenever Stark does."

"When's that?" She called after him as he walked off.

"You let me know!" His voice echoed down the hallway.  _Bastard._

Clint's trust was going to make her excursion difficult, because now she didn't want to have to lie to him if Stark got up to mischief – and this was Stark, he was probably always getting up to shit _, and I might want to be a part of it._

"Ma'am?" Jarvis's voice in her ear had her freezing in place. Would the AI think that she would betray his inventor _,_ could he think like that? "I believe I have found a suitable composite for your arrows."

Aerla pressed a cold hand to the warm wall and said with relief, "Jarvis, I can never say it enough, you are amazing."

"Thank you, ma'am. Should I tell Mr Stark that you are to join him to Stark Tower?"

Her lips twisted in a loath smile. "No, thank you, I'll tell him myself."

Aerla wasn't sure whether Jarvis was unable to judge her, or whether he chose not to. Regardless, he seemed as responsive as ever, but she had a feeling that Stark wouldn't be when she told him the news. He was grumpy, private, eager to get off of the ship, and she was going to shadow him for the duration.

Best make it quick, like removing a plaster.

"Hey, Glow, guess who wants to come to the tower with you?"

 

* * *

 

Loki paced in his cell; something dire had tugged at his senses for the past hour, making him uneasy. His eyes darted to the door of his prison room and then to the glass walls of his cell, expecting to see an intrusion or a break in, but there was nothing.

He had been dreadfully bored since their return nearly a whole month ago, but at least boredom was preferable to anxiety. He could not put his brilliant plan into action now, not when he could feel time like the trickle of sand against his spine, and it was running out. It made him feel alarmingly vulnerable, and that was not a sensation he overly enjoyed.

Since the sickening lurch of the Tesseract had brought them stumbling to Asgard, something had watched him. Even his excursions to Yggdrasil had only stuttered the sensation before it found him again. He had felt it from the moment his feet had touched the frustratingly familiar Bifrost, and he knew it was not Heimdall. Loki would have preferred it to have been the gatekeeper; at least then he would know the source, and not be kept in suspense like some wretched animal awaiting his master's call.

Loki's magic tingled in his fingertips, wanting to strike out at the invisible enemy but having nothing to focus on. Instead, he released it in a controlled burst, sending myriad books and fabrics fluttering about the room but achieving naught. Feeling it rush through him was a sweet torture; he was well aware of how powerful he was, and yet here he stood in a blasted cell, unable to do anything except  _wait_ and it was  _utterly repulsive_ -

"Show yourself." He spat into the tension and kicked aside a fallen chair, regretting it immediately when it clattered to the floor and the resulting silence was deafening.

He was not alone.

Phantom hands wrenched at his shoulders and his magic both reared and quailed against the opposing force. Loki recognised that power signature, had not wanted to encounter it again for a lifetime, because the last time that he had, it had almost broken him.

Loki had thought himself safe inside his golden prison, but he had not considered that if he could still wander the astral plane, so too could his pursuer. The name was croaked out of his throat as bands of energy constricted his entire body. "Thanos."

Gasping out when hard floor crashed against his ribs, Loki skidded through the stars and into a different room. He wanted to spit in the Allfather's face, for what kind of a king could not keep his prisoners safe?

"Worthless." A distressingly recognisable voice boomed from above him and Loki rather wanted to agree with the remark, until a boot met his stomach that had him curling into the foetal position and trying not to yell. He would not give his torturer the satisfaction of noise, not again.

"I plucked you from your cell like a babe from a crib; your debts are racking up,  _jǫtunn_."

Loki couldn't help the twitch that always disturbed him when confronted with his hated heritage. He was of the firm belief that if you could ignore something, it would go away; unfortunately he was being proved wrong at every turn. A foot kicked Loki's shoulder over and pushed it into the floor, a muffled series of cracks echoing around the room as the bone all-too-easily shattered. "Aren't they,  _jǫtunn?_

"Yes," Loki snapped as he leaned up on one arm, trying not to wince at the immense pain in the other. He finally looked up at the behemoth that towered over him, meeting the deadly gaze with a clenched jaw. Thanos looked as hale as ever,  _the demon_. The last time Loki had looked into such a murderous face was when the Midgardians' green beast was trying to force him through the floor.

Loki despised brutes. "Greetings, Thanos."

An enormous red hand clamped around Loki's injured shoulder as Thanos murmured sibilantly, "I thought you were hiding from me,  _jǫtunn_ , but it seems you were beaten instead."

Loki gritted his teeth against the onslaught of pain and managed to reply, "The humans are surprisingly well-lived, I will admit."

Thanos twisted his fingers, making the crushed bone cut deeper into Loki's flesh. "They were mortals, tools to be shaped, and yet here you cower at my feet."

"They have their own magic now, mutation, they call it," Loki answered swiftly, although he thought he was doing his own skills a disservice by likening it so. The humans' abilities were laughable, a mere pittance compared to anything else in the Nine Realms. They did not wield magic, they were too feeble and small to do so; but Loki had to give some sort of reason to explain his apparent defeat.

Thanos was not impressed. "They are still weak, worthless, as are you, evidently."

Loki opened his mouth to vehemently deny the association but clicked his teeth together when his shoulder became so much pulpy flesh and bone under Thanos's crushing grip. Air rushed in his ears and then his back met stone again, his head snapping still as dark spots danced in his vision.

"Where is the Tesseract, Giant? I will storm whatever kingdom to retrieve it."

Loki shuddered at the thought of the Mad Titan's army descending onto an unprepared Asgard. The Allfather's throne was his and his alone, he wanted it in its glory, not a crumbling, weak thing that he assumed after it was defeated.

"Midgard." Loki found the lie on the top of his tongue and deemed it delicious. "It is on Midgard still."

"And the staff too?"

Loki had no idea where the thrice-damned sceptre had got to, but he knew that it hadn't accompanied them on their return trip. As long as Asgard was kept safe for a little longer, he would become the rightful king at last and then he could rally an army against Thanos. Loki decided that he might as well damn the Midgardians; they could perish for all he cared. "Yes."

"Fetch them."

Loki painfully lifted his head to frown at Thanos' back. "What?"

"You owe me a debt, Laufeyson."

Loki sneered at the name but everything that the Titan said was correct. He should have expected that the Allfather's paltry prison would not hide him for long; not from a being as powerful as Thanos.

"You will return to Midgard and retrieve what I want, like the vassal that you are. Evidently you cannot defeat the mortals, so instead I want you to weaken them, in whatever way your twisted pretender's mind can fathom."

Loki remained silent for a moment to mull over the instruction. He did not want to return to the mortals' planet but if it meant that he could escape the Mad Titan's eye until he had formed another plan, so be it. "And that will end our deal?"

A cruel smile twisted Thanos's red lips as he turned to face him. "Do not think to bargain with me, little god."

Anger overtook Loki's apprehension and he struggled not to lash out at the overbearing trepidation. Similar words had been spoken by the green beast on Midgard shortly before he had been captured. But Loki knew that no matter where he went, he would be followed. Even if he could refuse the Titan's order, only a decorated cell and his mother's sad eyes awaited him.

"I will go."

"You never had a choice, Trickster."

Foreign power slithered over his skin and captured his magic in an impenetrable shield, sending his physical form hurtling towards a pathetic green-and-blue planet that did not have what he sought.

Loki had doomed himself as well as Midgard.

 

* * *

 

Aerla awoke with a scream in her throat and her wolf trying to force its way out of her skin _. Something was incredibly wrong;_  her magic hadn't bucked so wildly since she had first stepped into the heather that had awoken it. A sob was ripped out of her at the thought of her land crying out without her there to soothe it.

She shook uncontrollably, fine tremors accompanying her choked noises. Groping for the light, she thudded to the floor and huddled there, whining. Such terror echoed in her mind, something immoral and alien still lingered in her memory.

Dim light flooded the ceiling's sconce in a setting that she hadn't even been aware of. "Ma'am?"

Aerla took a shuddering breath, desperately trying to get her signals under control now that she remembered where she was. "Jarvis. A bad dream, nothing more."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like some help, ma'am?"

"No!" Aerla bit her quivering lip and heaved another breath, trying not to sound so distressed." No, thank you. I need but a moment."

Pushing herself up onto one trembling arm, Aerla fought against the urge to shift, to hide in her fur and run as far as she could from the fear. Her eyes darted around the room, unable to shake the feeling of being in the open, like a gazelle on the plain. The walls were solid under her outstretched hand but she wasn't reassured by cold metal instead of warm wood.

Aerla would not sleep any more tonight, so she shouldered her quiver and beckoned Jarvis to open the door. She meandered, unsure of where her feet would take her, still twitching at the thought of a strange presence in her head.  _What had it been, and where the Hell had it come from?_  It was drastically different from the roaring curiosity that she had last felt near a month ago, this was something that slithered and clamped.

A whine pushed its way out of her mouth and Aerla was too stressed to hide it, halting when she realised that she was at the control room once more. She settled a little now that she was back in the accustomed space. It was dark but not lifeless, Jarvis still worked away in the machines and she gravitated towards her counter, sighing in relief when her fingers rubbed against the warm metal.

Her taut nerves were plucked once more when a rustle sounded at her back. Aerla had turned and drawn her bow before her surprised snarl could sound. Stark blinked at her from beyond the tip of her arrow, his hair ruffled and smelling of sleep.

"Jarvis, how fast was that?" Stark muttered, rubbing his eyes and ignoring her warrior stance.

"1.3 seconds, sir."

Aerla scowled at his casual reaction. "Why are you sneaking about?"

"I'm not sneaking about, I stomped all the way here, you're the one who's losing their touch."

She gripped the arrow and released the string, smirking when he flinched at the harmless sound. "Do not taunt archers, for they are quick and arrows are final."

Stark sneered at her to cover his shock. "Jarvis said something was up."

Aerla grimaced and shook her bow at the ceiling. "Damn it, Jarvis, I said I was okay." Stark raised an eyebrow as if he was waiting for something. She sighed, "Thank you for thinking of me though."

Stark rolled his eyes at her gesture of politeness towards his AI, but she didn't care. Jarvis had woken up his inventor because she had been behaving strangely, that warmed her heart. Still, she narrowed her eyes at Stark. "Go back to bed."

"Can't sleep, why are you up?"

"Bad dreams, you?"

"Noisy kid."

She bared her teeth at the humour that tugged at his lip,  _annoying man_. Aerla wanted time to analyse the terrifying sensation and she couldn't do that with the astute inventor around, not when her wolf was still so close to the surface.

"You're very jumpy tonight," Stark remarked mockingly.

"Yeah, well, nightmares are scary." Especially nightmares that were so real, she could still scent her own terror on her skin. Aerla fervently hoped that it had been a mere dream; it would mean that she could carry on waiting for Thor. All of a sudden, she wasn't sure what she was doing here; whatever it was that had brushed past was too powerful for her, not at all reminiscent of the tantalising starlight that had stopped flitting along the corridors.

"Want to talk about it?"

"Not particularly."

"Is it to do with why I keep catching Bruce staring at you like you're some particularly interesting un-cracked formula?"

Her unease simmered down to be overthrown with tense neutrality. Aerla gave Stark a thousand-yard stare; the man was far too perceptive for his own good. She verbally aimed for the heart to make him quit his line of questioning. "Did I make you speak about your panic attack?"

Stark gave her a look that said she couldn't fool him. "No, but this isn't about me, it's about Bruce."

"Bruce can handle himself."

"Can he? Is that how he managed to switch from Hulk to human in record time?"

"Why don't you ask him, if you're so interested?" Aerla snapped, almost restraining the bitterness in her voice. She felt attacked from all angles, she  _liked_ Stark, more than was strictly healthy; but now it all felt like so much crumpled paper to be blown away by a particularly fierce and terrifying wind.

It hurt more than it should for someone who was preparing to jump ship.

"Because Bruce is loyal to the bone, why else do you think he's still here? We're not working on the staff like Fury wants, but Bruce can't leave, not when the rest of us will keep fighting."

"What's your point, Stark?"

"You and I, we have an arrangement," he started, and held out a placating hand when she restlessly palmed her bow. "You helped me when I was messed up, so here I am."

Aerla frowned at his tone; it was so matter-of-fact, as if he was trying to keep this as far from sentimental as possible. It was too easy for her to forgive his probing, too touched by his gruff affection, but Stark was a force to be reckoned with and her wolf recognised a worthy wordsmith. "You don't owe me anything."

"I won't after this."

Aerla wanted to dislike the man; he was asking questions and forging accords where she didn't want them. Stark was being  _sweet,_ for Hell's sake. If the thing she had sensed wasn't coming to destroy them, she half-expected the world to end anyway.

As Aerla sighed and warred with herself, Stark went to make coffee and let her decide. Even that little action was considerate, and it made her want to smile. Fear was still a fur on her tongue and Aerla imagined that she would be flinching at noises for a while. But if she followed the instinct to flee, that unnatural power would wreck all of Earth, for no one could withstand that brand of dread.

Aerla would not let the Avengers defend against it alone.

"Something is coming."

Stark stopped his busying at her low tone to raise a sardonic eyebrow at her. "That's a bit ominous."

"I won't tell you how and I can't tell you what, so don't ask."

He turned properly and the glint of curiosity that she had been fearing had appeared in his eye. "I want to ask."

"And I don't want to tell you. Suffice to say it terrified me enough that we're talking at night and yet there's no whiskey."

The kettle clicked in the silence and Stark continued his preparations. Aerla held her breath and hoped that she had made the right decision, but Stark was just too ruthlessly smart.

"You expect me to believe you just  _somehow_ know?"

Aerla bristled at the hidden accusation of her being involved, but the man had a point. "I imagine that Jarvis is still, at this very moment, clicking through SHIELD's files and keeping tabs on everything. Even if I could get something past him, I've hidden him from Fury and the others, just as I hope you would keep this hidden until I know more."

Stark looked over thoughtfully and surprised her by asking, "Sugar?"

"Er, one, please?"

He grimaced and muttered something derogatory under his breath as he kept his drink sweet-free. "Do you think it's gonna be here within the next two days?"

"I wish I knew, why?"

Stark finally returned to the counter and handed over her appropriated mug with a shrug. "We've got a chance to leave, so I'm not gonna tell anyone."

Aerla sighed in relief as the tension lifted from her shoulders. Stark wasn't interrogating her and he seemed to be on her side still. She could do this, a day away from the helicarrier would be good for them both, and hopefully _Ásgarðr_  had felt what had threatened Earth. Perhaps it would even summon Thor and all of this could be put behind her; save the planet, find her heritage, and try her hardest to forget the mortals that she was caring too much for.

Stark sleepily asked Jarvis to order in some more whiskey for the tower, and Aerla couldn't help but smile as she sipped from her mug.

Stark had made her tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and shitty sleep-schedule, are all mine.


	15. Files and Filing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It was far, far, too painful a hope to think that she was something as prodigious as that, so she hovered in limbo between human, wolf, and something else; desperately searching for answers... Because only humans were left behind."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert! The first scene contains one large spoiler from 'Marvel: Agents of Shield' (from season 1, episode 5). If you haven't seen it - and I recommend you do so - there will be some names you won't recognise. It won't affect your enjoyment, they're just some fluff references for M:AoS watchers.
> 
> If you really want to avoid the spoiler, read until the mention of 'objects of power' and then skip ahead to the next scene; but I recommend coming back after you've caught up with the show.

>   
> "There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees, and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes."
> 
> ― Victor Hugo, ' _Les Misérables'_

 

In Phil's defence, he didn't seem surprised when he found her lounging in his office chair the next day, but it must have just been testament to his equanimity. Aerla had not been waiting long but she had spent it knowing that she shouldn't have come. She was toeing a dangerous line and risking both of their exposures, but she felt better as soon as she saw him, and so it was worth it.

"How do you do that?" Phil asked calmly and headed for a cupboard, as if she hadn't just evaded Stark, Fury, and a myriad of SHIELD agents to get aboard a plane that shouldn't have been so close to the helicarrier.

"You don't look for animals; they're inconsequential to mighty humans."

Phil glanced over in amusement at her sarcastic statement. "I see you've been spending time with Stark."

"I'm babysitting him."

The agent paused with his hands around a decanter and two glasses. "How long since you left?"

It was difficult to tell. She had locked onto Phil's plane as soon as Stark had taken her to the ground and arranged to meet her later. He had offered to whisk her to his tower but she had wanted to know why a dead man was playing chicken with the Avengers, so she had waved Stark off and made a deal with an irate Jarvis. The AI had not been happy that she was going to leave him and her earpiece behind, but with pleas and promises, eventually he had agreed to not watch her.

With amazing, steady bedrock under her feet, and a couple of hours of freedom, Aerla had laughed delightedly and shifted into her fur to sneak back onto Phil's plane. The act had felt unnervingly familiar, but this time around was distinctly more relaxed, she was confident in her abilities and looking forward to seeing the man who she had told her secrets to.

Aerla looked dubiously at the clock on his desk and hedged, "Half an hour?"

"He's already in Malibu."

Aerla dismissed the agent, but he just shook his head in disbelief as if she was blind, and it made her frown. "No… He can't be; his suit's broken."

"I said that once."

Aerla almost laughed at his laconic memory, there was a story there for another time. "Don't tell me that, I'm meant to be keeping an eye on him."

"Does Fury think he'll run off again?"

"Something along those lines; I wasn't really paying attention, heard 'outside' and jumped at the chance."

Phil smiled wryly as he sat opposite and then regarded her seriously, the shadows she disliked crossing his face. "They know yet?"

Aerla wondered whether he could see her fur in his mind's eye when he looked at her, or if he was so level-headed and accustomed to superpowers that they didn't affect him anymore. "No."

She was about to amend her simple word but Phil sighed wearily. "You're running out of time if you want to do it yourself. The information will automatically go to Fury and even I can't stop this one. It's been set in stone since you first arrived."

His conviction made her grimace; ' _even I can't stop this one'._  Had Fury been requesting information the entire time she had been on Phil's plane, but he had been putting the director off? Guilt made her worry for him, that he might get in Fury's shit list if it all came out before Thor arrived. Aerla still had two more days, but the apprehension on Phil's face made it seem so very paltry.

It made her think about what would happen to them once she left, and she didn't want to think about that. It hurt a little too much.

"Bruce knows," Aerla said defensively, and Phil raised an impassive eyebrow. "There was an issue with the big guy."

Phil tried to hide his concern but she saw it in the way he tensed, in the hint of longing in his eyes, and she disliked Fury a little more. "Everyone okay?"

"All fine, one of the birds scored him and he wouldn't shift. Turns out shock can bring him back." Aerla didn't bother elaborating, because Phil could find out anything that happened within SHIELD.

"You trust him?"

Aerla smiled fondly and it made Phil smile too. "We're kindred spirits; he knows I've got his back."

"Good."

Tilting her head at that succinct reply, she added, "And yours. I still owe you for getting me on."

"Never tell Maria," Phil replied, thankfully overlooking her foolish sentimentality.

"Never tell Clint that I watched his practice videos."

Phil's lip curved into a smile at the memory of her studying the modern archer's techniques and insisting that sometimes medieval was better. Aerla still stood by that, even though their time in the archery range had proved that they were of a similar skill – which Phil had probably seen and chuckled at. "Deal."

He poured what smelt like whiskey into her glass, and it was a sight nicer than Clint's. When he inclined his drink at hers, Aerla did the same and hummed happily at the smooth burn along her throat. They enjoyed in comfortable silence and she mulled over what she had wanted to ask him. Phil was playing with fire by resting his plane at one of the helicarrier's stopovers, but first, he had a wealth of information that she couldn't ask of Jarvis.

"So, what can you tell me about mutation?"

Phil immediately opened a neat folder left on his sparse desk, one that she had forced herself not to read. It turned out that she could have indulged anyway and it was with excited curiosity that she pulled the documents over, absent-mindedly thinking it strange that it had been the one thing on display. Had he been studying it before she had arrived?

The confused thought was cut off when Aerla saw what the files contained. Names, places, descriptions, abilities. _Regenerating cells, super-strength, shape-shifting-_ "What is this, why didn't you tell me you were looking at these?"

"I didn't think you wanted to know."

Aerla looked up at his insufferable calm in distress. Because she hadn't, hadn't been interested in mutation when he had given her access to his records, but this wasn't just idle documentation of case-studies, these were  _symptoms_  that were startlingly similar to her powers. Except that these were single occurrences, they didn't all exist in just one person.  _Only I have that dubious honour._

Phil's precise notes decorated the margins and her eyes skittered over them in unease. They referenced her, not in name, but the descriptions were obvious; he had hand-picked mutations and built her out of them, like some sort of supernatural building blocks.

"You think this is magic, Phil?" She asked in confused misery. "Humans don't have magic, it's not possible."

"You have it."

"That's why I can't be human!" Her voice rang louder than she wanted it to, and the words were filled with hurt. Aerla hated that she had so easily crumbled under Phil's painfully accurate probing, and it was only going to get worse. Did he think that she had sat idly by for the last millennium, not at all concerned with her genetic makeup?  _I don't make any sense,_ she wanted to scream at him _;_  she was a wrong statistic amongst seven billion right ones.

"Aren't you?"

"How can I be? This folder tells you no one can do what I can, no one except for the Asgardians." And it was far,  _far,_  too painful a hope to think that she was something as prodigious as that, so she hovered in limbo between human, wolf, and something else; desperately searching for answers,  _because only humans were left behind_. Aerla shook her head in bitter confusion. Why was Phil doing this, why was he comparing her to mutants when he knew that she was magic?

The waiting plane and ready folder then made sense. "You knew I would come back, didn't you? You wanted my opinion on.. on  _superpowers?_ "

Phil tilted his head to the side and remained excruciatingly composed. "We're close to working out how they manifest, you said yours began when you encountered magic, maybe there's more around Earth, maybe that's where they come from."

She gave him a grimace and sniped derisively, "Magic is not some friendly fairy who gifts powers to random individuals; it's a force to be reckoned with. Mutation is humanity's way of coping with that threat, it's evolution. Stick with what you know, Phil, don't attribute this to the gods."

"You'd be surprised how many people do just that."

Aerla heaved a sigh that made her oldest wounds ache in memory, because she was not at all surprised. She had been born in a time where celestial beings ruled one's world and demanded living sacrifices, where having  _powers_  was an offence so great that your family turned on you and your neighbours called for your blood.

It seemed to Aerla that the world had not changed in the slightest.

She sank back into her chair and held a gulp of whiskey in her mouth until her tongue numbed. Aerla wanted to help, more than she should, but mutation could not be her concern. Not now, not after all of these years. "Trust me, Phil, if those powers were magic, I would know. Just as I know where Thor has stood and on what paths the Tesseract was taken. It's in the air, and it's not on mutants."

There was some in the plane, just a trace, but enough for her to breathe deep and erase some of the cranky homesickness that she had been experiencing without it. She had drained the helicarrier dry but a tiny amount still lingered in Phil's scent.

It wasn't enough to convince her that he and his team had a point.

Phil looked at her closely, at the tense line to her shoulders and the way she cradled her glass, she knew it cried exhaustion when he said gently, "I believe you, but we could do with your help. There are too many mutants out there and SHIELD doesn't have all of the information needed."

"Leave them be, if they want to join they'll contact you."

"That's the problem, they aren't, they're going elsewhere." Phil replied mysteriously, but Aerla was in no mood for an agent's mind games.

"I can't, I can't do this, Phil. I'm helping the Avengers and that's all I'll do. I won't round up other humans just to create some sort of slave army for SHIELD." Aerla's head found her hands and she mumbled an apology, not intending to insult the man who had helped her. Phil was too well-meaning to be anything other than the good guy, but she was seriously starting to think that he worked for a bad one.

"Some of them are volatile; they need to be found before they harm themselves or others."

Aerla eyed him through her fingers and was relieved to see that he was being genuine; he wasn't using them for potential recruits. "I thought your area of expertise was objects of power?"

"Sometimes I help them on their way, too."

Aerla snorted into her palms at the subtle reference to her and saw that he did exactly that. She had almost thought him a heartless conscriptor, but in reality he was shepherding mutants and the occasional misguided soul. No one knew that he was doing it, he didn't have to, but he did it regardless. Phil was too virtuous; Aerla greatly admired the noble trait but she worried that one day it might be his downfall.

Phil's smiled dimmed as he refilled her glass with more whiskey. When he spoke again, he sounded so very tired; the sort of tired that she was hearing far too often from Earth's defenders. "You were right."

"I tend to be." Aerla lifted her head when she realised that he wasn't referring to his proficiency at finding powerful things. "About what?"

"Skye."

Aerla groaned in annoyance. She had left Phil with words of warning about his newest member, the woman that he had been tracking when Aerla had, in turn, been tracking him. Her instincts were never wrong and they had been wary around the female hacker. Aerla hated thinking that Phil's enviable pronoia might have finally soured because of some disloyal human. "Sometimes I want to be wrong."

"Me too." Phil replied with a sad smile before turning serious again. "You know, if I listened to everything people told me, I would never have trusted you. May doesn't, nor Natasha and Fury."

Aerla winced at that unforgiving list but shrugged indifferently, it was not as if the news was surprising. "You never were good at following orders."

Phil smiled properly, even if it was quite wry. "If I hear correctly, neither are you."

Aerla snorted in amusement that he was keeping tabs on her even from his distanced base. It shouldn't have pleased her so much that they so easily settled into their comfortable acquaintance, dismissing harsh words with the refill of a glass. Aerla smirked inwardly when she realised that whiskey was the apparent bond between her and most of the important people in her life.

Phil might have tried to draft her into his little troupe of agents, but that was because he thought that she could help them, and that what they found might help her. He didn't know the intricacies of magic – and in reality, neither did she – but until it affected Earth, she was not going to explain it to them. Phil was managing very well without her, and she would not screw up another hierarchy, even if she had enjoyed herself in it.

"Fitz and Simmons get together yet?"

Phil chuckled quietly at her hopeful question. "No, and I think you still owe money to the pool."

"Hey, it's going to happen, and you're all going to look foolish."

"I think Ward said that if you're so hard up for cash, maybe you should sell your bow."

"Can I fight him?"

Phil tried to hide his smile as he gave her a discerning look. "No."

"Please?"

"Don't you have somewhere to be?"

Content and entertained, Aerla got up and stretched lazily. "I suppose I should get back to Stark, he'll need feeding soon."

Phil blinked, as if he had just remembered that she was a thousand years older than her reckless charge. It made her laugh and she relished the feeling of superiority that came with age, it was what made her so protective. "Want me to check on your hacktivist?"

"No, it's fine, I've got it under control."

"If you say so." Aerla rolled her shoulders in grudging acceptance. If Phil wanted to deal with the traitor in his own way, that was fine. Things might get a little bloody if Aerla saw the woman that had betrayed Phil, and he probably knew that.

But Aerla knew that he would be lenient with Skye, because she knew that he had already forgiven her.

Somehow, Phil's constant – and sometimes frustrating – optimism seemed to rub off on her, because despite what they had spoken of, Aerla felt happy. She tried not to dwell on how the Phil-shaped chink in her armour had become even more ingrained, because that was irrational and unwarranted. Instead she pretended that it was merely her great care for Earth that had her snagging a pen and scribbling on the –  _her –_  mutation folder.

"Take this." Aerla jotted her phone number down like a creature without an insanely clever AI at her beck and call. "Put it on the business account, I'm technically overseas."

Phil seemed pleased by her joke rather than the sentimental promise that she wanted to make, that he could call on her whenever. She tapped it forcefully with her finger and urged, "If you use this, do it behind every single security protocol that you have, and then some."

Phil levelled an amused look at her. "Stark's technology can't find me, Aerla."

Aerla returned with a look that was equal parts dubious and condescending. Phil had kept himself hidden for this long, but Jarvis would eventually be everywhere SHIELD was. In an attempt to distract herself from the slowly crippling guilt at lying to comrades, she mimicked something he had said earlier, "If it does, even I can't stop it."

"Was that supposed to be me?"

"I can't do the face, but Ward said I was pretty spot on with the tone."

"Get off my plane."

Aerla grinned at his vain attempt to hide his laughter, satisfied in the knowledge that he would be careful with the communication, now all that remained was to convince him to use it. "If you need me, call."

"You're with the Avengers now," he said strangely, that abhorrent darkness flicking through his clear eyes before he covered it. At that moment she hated Fury, hated SHIELD, hated Loki, hated how much Phil mattered to her. But he did, and she owed him her alliance even more than her friendliness.

"I'm with those that have my loyalty, so if you think for a second that something is up, I'll be there."

He studied her for a moment and then tilted his head at a beep. "This is you."

Aerla paused at the door to look at him one last time and take in his paper-and-technology scent that still hinted of starlight. "I mean it, Phil."

"I know."

 

* * *

 

 

Jarvis had still been distinctly displeased when she finally managed to race back to her earpiece, but Aerla had laughingly apologised and crooned questions until he had stiffly told her that Stark was still at his tower,  _thank the stars._  Having hailed a cab in a ghastly shade of yellow, Aerla took a startled breath when they pulled up outside a skyscraper that she had previously only seen from afar. It emanated with technology and her energised wolf shivered at the pure electrical energy that rippled from its depths.

It must be the arc reactor that's pushing out so much power; no wonder the Iron Man suit packs such a punch _._ Aerla had to hold back an instinctual flinch when she touched the metal door and was convinced that a spark nipped her fingers. Stepping into a lobby of exquisitely polished marble, jet black and threaded with beads of gold, she had a feeling that the entire building would be so decadently decorated; it was Stark's after all.

The lift doors opened as she approached, and if she hadn't thought that Jarvis was in every inch of the building, she would have been surprised. Inside, she came face to face with a reflective black panel. "What's this?" She asked to the empty air as the doors closed and the unsettling sensation of moving but not seeing how tingled in her stomach.

"It is a hand scanner." Jarvis paused for a moment before continuing, "And an eye scanner, and a variety of other scanners."

"I'm surprised Stark doesn't have the TSA on his hands," Aerla joked, pleased that the AI was answering her normally again.

"Mr Stark doesn't travel commercial."

Aerla nodded slowly as the lift doors opened onto floor-to-ceiling windows and a breath-taking view. "No, of course he doesn't. Does he have a Concord? I always wanted to fly in..." She trailed off when two heads looked at her from a cream sofa across a lit expanse.

"I do, and no, you can't fly one." Stark turned back to the low table in front of him, and she smothered a relieved sigh. He evidently didn't know who she had just been rubbing shoulders with and so she murmured a smaller prayer of thanks _._ It did not escape Aerla's notice that she seemed to be pretty bloody grateful whenever Stark wasn't in the know about something; but of them all, he was the one who could ruin her in one fell swoop if he felt so inclined. At the end of the day, Jarvis was his and she was an outsider.

That thought really shouldn't hurt so much.

Aerla had already recognised a far friendlier face from television screens that broadcasted around the globe. Pepper Potts, Stark's only tamer _. Well, I'll be damned._  The redheaded woman was almost as famous as her billionaire boss-slash-boyfriend. She ran Stark's ludicrously profitable business, and apparently did it far better than its owner had.

"I said fly  _in_  one, although I do have a pilot's license."  _It might be a few decades out of date, mind._

Stark ignored her reply as he held a refreshed glass of something sparkling, and swapped it with the empty one in Pepper's hand without her fully realising. "How did you get up here, kid?"

"Jarvis let me in." Aerla pointed a casual finger up into empty space and Pepper's eyebrows raised as Stark looked around the room in mild exasperation.

"She  _is_  on the list, sir." Jarvis sounded defensively, and Aerla smiled sunnily, remembering how much she loved that AI.

"Yeah," Stark said grudgingly as he spread his hands. "But that doesn't mean she can come up whenever. What if I had been  _busy_?" His tone dropped at the last word and Pepper swatted him absent-mindedly.

Aerla wanted to smirk at them, Stark was supposed to be this big bravo who bowed down to no one, and yet here, in this room, he was reprimanded by a pretty, petite woman who commanded his corporation with lightning-quick intellect. Pepper was the epitome of that famous quote regarding the good woman behind the man. In a way, she had done more for Earth than most people, because she kept Stark above the water where he would otherwise drown.

 _How fascinatingly adorable… Clint would die laughing._  The urge to chuck Stark on the chin almost overwhelmed her. Instead, Aerla walked over to Stark Industries' CEO and stuck out her palm, because meeting Pepper was like meeting the performer who held the whip and chair.

"It seems strange to see you in the flesh instead of on a screen."

The fingers that gripped back were soft but firm, as Pepper replied with amusement, "I tend to hear that."

There was something that looked like distrust lurking in Pepper's discriminating eyes. Aerla knew that Natasha Romanova had put that there, with her sly infiltration of Stark's life before the Avengers. It was a good thing - if a sad one - because Pepper was too important to Stark for anything to happen to her if she let her guard down.

Stark looked between them, seeming almost disappointed that there had been no drama. "It's okay, the kid doesn't like Natasha either."

They both levelled an irritated glance at him, but where Aerla was reluctantly becoming accustomed to that damned nickname, Pepper was entertainingly accustomed to admonishing Stark, "I don't dislike her, why do you keep saying that?"

"Er, because you do?"

"She  _is_  a bit of a snake," Aerla remarked matter-of-factly and they both turned to look at her. "What? She's an assassin, poison and fangs, it's her thing."

Stark paused and then implored Pepper with a satisfied, "See?"

Pepper took a deep breath and Aerla wondered how often she had to do that. She must be an absolute saint to put up with him. Aerla tried to distract the aggravating man so Pepper could take a moment. "You're just grouchy that I'm babysitting you."

When Stark stilled and Pepper raised her eyebrows again, Aerla wondered with a rueful grin whether that was overstepping the line in a building that didn't belong to her. She was fairly certain that Jarvis might give her a second's head-start if the Iron Man suit came after her, which was all she ever needed. Escape was an easy trick after performing it countless times.

Stark finally grumbled an assent and nodded at the opposite arm chair to send her over. "Speaking of that, you showed up at just the right time."

"Is that so?" Aerla shrugged her quiver around so she could lean back without it bothering her, and settled on the plush black cushions. Stark sure knew how to monochrome, if he had had absolutely any hand in the decoration. The rounded room was a study in modernity and technology, both impressing and discomfiting her. It felt like Stark and Jarvis, seemingly simple but actually incredibly complex.

To her right sat a fireplace, marble and swish, and to her left was an enticing wet bar that looked well-stocked enough to last even them a couple of nights. It made Aerla idly wonder how long they could put SHIELD off for, but business prevailed.

"Pepper needs me to go to the office, and with things the way they are,"  _Your suit being out of action, you mean,_ "I could do with an extra body."

Aerla wasn't sure whether to smile or groan. It was pleasing that Stark trusted her enough at his back to call her along for the ride, but annoying that  _paper work_  was going to distract him from the fun stuff that she wanted to see. The electric energy in the tower might discomfort her wolf, but Aerla was curious enough to want to withstand it and explore.

Pepper stirred at his side. "Where's Happy?"

"He's downstairs, but the more the merrier."

Stark's nonchalant tone had Aerla's eyes narrowing at the pair.  _Stark doesn't want her to know that he's down for the count if we get attacked, why?_ More to the point, why was he so convinced that there would be any trouble, they were going to an  _office,_ for Hell's sake.

When Stark looked over, it was as if he was asking - without actually wanting to ask - for a favour. It was so typically unsentimental of him that she agreed, if he was concerned then so was she. Aerla trusted his judgement now that they were in his territory. "Of course, wouldn't want you to break a nail."

Pepper smiled at her glib tone and reached over to hand her the full glass that she had been holding, before turning to take Stark's for herself. He frowned at his empty hands and then pointedly looked over at Aerla's. "That's not yours."

"You said that about the earpiece, but I've still got it." Aerla automatically rubbed a finger against the comforting presence in her ear, the morning without it had made her wistful.

Pepper covered a laugh and aimed a questioning look at Stark, who replied beseechingly and with one arm outstretched, "She stole it, from my very hand."

Aerla snorted at his tendency for drama, Stark would worm his way out of everything if he could. "You shouldn't have taunted me with it then, and besides, Jarvis and I get on."

"Apparently so." Pepper's voice was warm with laughter that made Aerla relax.

"So, business tycoons," Aerla said around a sip of golden bubbles, "When do we leave?"

Stark seriously regarded the champagne in his hands. "There's at least this bottle to finish first, and there's some more somewhere. Let's call it an hour."

 _At least,_  she thought with an enthusiastic smile. A day in the life of Tony Stark suited Aerla quite well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and 100% proof blood, are all mine.


	16. Explosions and Plots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m faster than you and my senses are better; damn you for entrusting me with someone you care about. “Fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where I've been: ah, I was a bit snowed under with work and then focused on solely updating somewhere else for a bit. The formatting for AO3 really dislikes my writing, so I have to wrestle with every update. For on-time publishing, follow me at FF.net (where I also have a second story on the go, my beloved BBC Musketeers). 
> 
> I'm going to try and find an easier way to update here, but in the meantime I might be a little slow. My humblest apologies, please take some Pepperony fluff in recompense!

>   
> “It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”
> 
>   
>  ― Margaret Atwood, _‘The Handmaid's Tale’_

 

“As long as we don’t fly, I can’t stomach any more aerial trips.” Aerla shuddered in mild disgust. She secretly wanted another but she wouldn’t give Stark the satisfaction of hearing _that_. To think that she had wanted to fly for so many centuries and yet here she was turning the opportunity down.

It was quite indicative of how her life had changed recently.

“You’re a portable pea shooter,” Stark remarked derisively as he led them outside the tower to where a flash dark car awaited them. A man that Aerla didn’t recognise emerged and held the door open for a smiling Pepper and a still grumpy Stark who muttered, “You’re in the front, kid.”

The unknown man looked up suddenly as if he hadn’t realised she was there, so she covered her scowl with a smile. “Hi, I’m Aerla, you must be Happy?”

He blinked at her for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, Happy Hogan, nice to meet you.” He glanced at the closing door and back at her, seeming to debate whether she needed her door opened as well. As familiar as this courtesy dance was, she was just another bodyguard for all intents and purposes; she needed to act like one too.

Aerla stopped his indecision with an upheld palm and a wink. “It’s fine, I think I’m supposed to be the hired help.”

He grinned in relief and then considered her quiver and bow for a moment before asking interestedly, “Are you one of the Super Friends?”

She couldn’t restrain a startled laugh and tilted her head in amused thought. “Er, kind of, yeah.” Happy would have known Stark before he was Iron Man and during, it wasn’t a surprise that the bodyguard knew about the Avengers too; his casual reaction was a welcome one though.

Happy smiled and shrugged in acceptance as she walked around the car and interrupted a heated debate in the backseat when they got in. Happy rolled his eyes when she gave him a questioning glance, so Aerla assumed that this was a normal occurrence. _Unsurprising, Stark is insufferable._

The journey passed by tensely enough, Pepper apparently deeming Stark impossible to talk to and instead amiably chatting with Happy. The chauffeur-slash-bodyguard must be Pepper’s shadow when Stark was away. It was a clever move, because the man was quite clearly in love with her. No one would defend their ‘body’ better than a lover; Aerla wondered whether Stark knew that.

A familiar name graced the side of a large building and she sighed into the window. “Have you ever thought about _not_ being so well known?”

“Could you even imagine that?” Pepper teased from the crook of Stark’s arm, indicating that their little tiff had thankfully not lasted long, another sign of how compatible they were. As Aerla looked back at them, it struck her how protective Stark was of Pepper. It wasn’t quite surprising – his tough exterior could only hide so much – but it was how important she was to him.

There was a distinct curve of her body against his, and he curled around her. The dark, surly inventor around the light, friendly businesswoman, she fighting his demons with love instead of superpowers; it was adorable.

Aerla suddenly felt insanely protective of them both, because that sort of love in a world such as this one needed to be cherished.

“No,” Stark replied coolly, and flipped some sunglasses down over his eyes. Happy had already gotten out of the car to open their door, so Aerla took her time observing the business that had made Stark his billions.

She was no stranger to the company, even if it hadn’t graced most news stories around the world, she had delved into SHIELD’s files – _courtesy of Phil, not Jarvis_ – to brush up on what the Internet couldn’t tell her. It was remarkable to consider that both father and son had created a superhero. The father had biologically engineered a body for the man with a heart of gold, and the son had technologically engineered a body of gold for the man with a heart of arc reactor power.

Pepper and Happy seemed to fall into a familiar routine and walked ahead, but Stark had paused to watch the busy doorway. He exhaled slowly when she settled at his side, mildly concerned at the stiffness of his spine. Brushing her shoulder against his to offer some grounding comfort, she asked, “Good to be back?”

“No good memories here,” he said honestly, surprising her. When she regarded the building again with new eyes, she agreed with him. Here he had withstood betrayal and countless hours of toil and hard work. It was his father’s business first, and perhaps Stark was too proud to accept that.

Heritage was a fucker. “Then let’s get in and get out, I’d rather not waste my holiday looking at paperwork.”

He scoffed, his usual contempt back in full force, “Holiday, yeah, if that’s what you want to call it.”

She encouraged him forward by stepping first. “Any time away from the helicarrier is a holiday, glory in it, it won’t last long.”

He followed and watched her through his dark glasses. “Not for you.”

It felt right to be walking next to him again, even if he was in a suit of armour made of cloth rather than metal. It suited him just as well, the man that kept his heart on display through his well-tailored shirt. Aerla grinned at his taunt. “What, you’ll leave all the bad guys to me? That’s sweet of you.”

He snorted a laugh, because she knew that he would go back, for all SHIELD didn’t think that he would. Stark might be a bastard at times, but he was a loyal one, and if the Avengers didn’t exist he would still be flitting about the world and keeping it safe.

He was dependable like that, as long as you knew what to depend on.

The hustle and bustle of the reception floor skipped a beat when Stark entered, so she affected a glower and radiated _‘fuck off’_ vibes. If someone approached him, they would find Aerla in their way, because she was on protection duty now. Stark frowned at the sudden tense line to her shoulders. “You’re here for Pepper, not me.”

“I’m here for you both, now lead on, I don’t like being out in the open.”

Stark sighed exasperatedly before looking around and smirking. “I don’t think I’m the problem, for once.”

Aerla switched from defence mode to see that her bow was getting a lot of attention, damn it. “Maybe we can pretend Clint got a sex change. How’s my pout, is it moody enough?”

His lip tilted ever-so-nearly into a full smirk and it made Aerla smile happily as they approached a security barrier and a distracted Happy. The man looked to Stark and then eyed her quiver warily. “You’ll need to leave that here.”

Stark wandered through without her and she frowned in disbelief after him. “Seriously? Stark, come on.”

“Those are the rules, kid.”

“Why bring me along if you knew I couldn’t use my bow?”

He spun on his heel to watch her over his sunglasses and the now fully-there smirk was full of secretive intent. “I’m sure you have some other tricks.”

_Sneaky bastard._ She growled low in her throat when people had started noticing the hubbub, so she swiftly unhooked her quiver in a public place for the first time in years and thrust it into Happy’s hands.

“Treat it like the Queen’s jewels.” She snarled at him, and he nodded quickly and stowed it in a safe under the desk. He was only satisfied when the metal detector didn’t go off after she held out her earpiece. As always, and for a reason she still wasn’t sure of, the knives in her boots raised no alarms.

_Magic and technology just don’t mix,_ she thought irritably. Her wolf growled in agreement and remained ever-wary without her bow to rely to on.

 

* * *

 

The skin between her shoulders had prickled ever since her quiver’s comforting weight had disappeared, and Aerla had to shrug off the sensation to whirl around and snap at the shadows. Stark hovered over Pepper’s shoulder as they looked at something on one of his thin-air screens, and Happy loomed over them both from the corner.

Aerla prowled to the door and glanced out into the empty corridor; making this the fifteenth time she had done so. Stark looked up agitatedly. “Stop that.”

Her lip quivered in an attempted snarl. “No.”

Stark sighed and pointedly ignored her, drawing his screen up higher to obscure the entire wall that she patrolled. Aerla’s back twitched again and she wanted to scream. It wasn’t alien, it wasn’t magic, it was just technology and pure instincts trying to tell her something. She hated being without her bow, but what aggravated her was the knowledge that the weapon was not easily accessible and all she had to her name were short-range weapons: daggers and teeth.

In a modern world where guns were commonplace and most wielders had reinforced vests on, the odds were stacked against her. She caught Happy’s eye and jerked her head outside, telling him that she was going on a walkabout. He hesitated and looked her over before nodding, and she wondered what it was about her that made him agree, whether her connection to Stark made her more or less acceptable.

Pepper frowned when Aerla made for the door again but was quickly distracted by a belligerent co-signee that refused to agree to something. They would be defenceless against an array of enemies, but this was a workplace, and no one should know they were there. But then why was Stark so convinced that something would happen? Guardian duty was something Aerla knew intimately, and she took it damned seriously.

_Fuck Stark and fuck his security measures._ Perhaps she should infiltrate the safe and retrieve her weapon, it was only fair. Trotting back into the wide-open lobby she had to deliberately keep her gaze away from the group of uniformed men that now surrounded the barrier. They would not let her near, not without Happy’s permission.

She was a nobody here, and for the first time in a long time, it was starting to irk her.

Instead, she leaned by a balcony, glancing over it to see scurrying scientists below, and striding businessmen above. This place was a hive of activity and yet, for all Happy had taken her bow, the rest of the security was remarkably lax. Stark should be spending his free-time fortifying this place if Pepper spent so much time here, or at least put vigilant Happy in charge of an update.

It was only because Aerla had turned to watch the loud interrogation of a hastily departing newcomer that she noticed the man’s twitchy trigger finger. A small black box was being snatched from his hand; unnervingly similar to the ones Aerla had seen in films that tended to be the prelude to an explosion.

“Bomb!” Aerla managed to yell before clapping her hands over her ears for the second time in two days and dove down the hallway. Hitting the floor before the first rumble, she felt at least three separate waves from different directions. Three charges, an all-encompassing destruction, or hoping to hit the two people who mattered?

An alarm rang throughout the building as Aerla shook off the dislodged dust and bolted back the way she had come. Shots might have pinged around the room and possibly towards her, but she was too busy cursing herself for not being prepared. It had been too long since she had played protector, her bodies were elsewhere and she was without her damned bow.

_Just because Stark plays it cool does not mean you can, you know better than that!_

A figure sprang from the corner that she was about to career around so she barrelled it to the floor. Her superior weight surprised them and gave her the immediate advantage. Her knees thunked against hard ground as she grabbed flailing wrists with one hand and with the other wrenched a blade from the heel of her boot. Pressing it against a masculine throat, she ordered, “Speak!”

Narrowed eyes watched her from the balaclava, so she cut it off, ensuring to run her edge very close to his skin as she did so. It revealed a man with absolutely no distinguishing features bar one scar beneath his left eyebrow. Aerla returned the blade to his throat and reiterated, “Speak or die.”

Confusion had him looking from her face to her plain clothes – she knew it had been a good idea to not wear that SHIELD outfit, _even if I do have to bleach this shirt again._ Faced with more silence and not wanting to waste any more time, she lifted her dagger and thunked the hilt against his temple, pleased when his eyes rolled back and he fell limp beneath her.

Pulling a band of leather from her arm guard, she could only secure his wrists and hide him behind a fallen table. It was a shoddily done job, but he might be useful for questioning later. Her nose was useless against the brick dust, and her eyes were not much better. She had to rely on memory and a calm Jarvis to take her back to Pepper’s office.

The wall where the door had stood had mostly crumbled, so Aerla scrambled over the rubble to leap inside. Happy wrestled an attacker over his gun, whilst Stark furiously typed into the somehow still functioning computer.

Movement from behind Aerla had her throwing her dagger with one hand as she plucked the second from her other boot. Happy’s antagonist went down with a strangled cry, much to the bodyguard’s astonishment. Aerla spun on her heel to see another dark robed figure crest the pile of debris and she coaxed him down with the tip of her blade. _Come play with me,_ she coaxed silently.

She saw the bunching of his knees to indicate the jump and she was there to meet his landing. Stabbing first and asking questions later was a policy Aerla much enjoyed, and knowing that she had a body to interrogate later meant that she had free reign on the rest. As she wiped most of the blood onto the dead man’s clothes, she kicked his unused gun towards the rest of the room, unwilling to touch the modern machine.

Happy watched her incensed approach with wide eyes, but she ignored him to slam her hands onto the ridiculously large desk that dominated the space. “Where’s Pepper?”

“Under the table,” Stark muttered as his fingers wove patterns through the air, the alarm stopped and his screen warped to show maps and power supplies. Trying to see what he was doing, Aerla faintly heard Pepper’s exasperated cry through the wood.

“Everything had been quiet here until you came back!”

“Everyone wants a piece of Tony Stark.”

Aerla snarled at his carefree attitude. “The only piece I care about is your earpiece, where the Hell is it?”

Stark shrugged and only looked up when she pointed her still bloody blade at him. He glanced at the work of art for a mere moment and did not give it the credit that it deserved.

“I don’t need it,” he said simply; and with an exaggerated flick of his finger, one wall opened to reveal what looked like a half-made suit.

Aerla let her arm drop to her side as she blinked in amazement. “You have another?”

“Kid, I have a few.” Stark strode over and clicked his fingers, lights flaring at his approach. “This one can’t fly though.”

“I don’t need you to fly, I just need you to stay alive, now put the bloody helmet on.” Aerla left him to his suit and stalked towards Happy, sliding her first dagger out from its fleshy sheathe as she passed it. “Shoot first, next time. The lobby’s out, there were at least three explosions, there are no identifying marks on their person, do you have an earpiece?”

Jarvis confirmed before Happy could even reel from her quick paced questions. “Mr Stark is online.”

“What now, Glow? Safety or the bad guys?”

“Both,” Stark replied pretentiously when she returned and pinged him on the chest, trying to hide her relief that he was back in more familiar gear. “Take Pepper, I’ll see if I can find anything.”

_I’m faster than you and my senses are better; damn you for entrusting me with someone you care about._ “Fine.” Aerla walked away and knelt by the desk, gingerly picking up the fallen gun to push it into Pepper’s hands. “Let’s go.”

The woman seemed to strengthen when she saw the Iron Man suit, even if it wasn’t his regular one, but it was enough to make her stand and grip the weapon more tightly. In all fairness, Stark was a sight to behold when he was decked up to the nines. It wasn’t Cap’s radiating strength but some sort of reckless stability when the world was going to shit.

Aerla gently gripped Pepper’s arm to share morale and then spoke encouragingly, “I’ll take point; Happy will bring up the rear. We’re just heading to the car and getting the Hell out of Dodge, okay?”

Pepper nodded but watched Stark disappear over the debris before meeting her eye. Worry etched lines into her clear skin and Aerla could only echo it. “The sooner we get out, the sooner I can hunt him down.”

The nod was firmer this time, as if Pepper realised that Aerla was champing at the bit to stand at that foolish man’s back and tear through whoever threatened him and his. Happy rustled through his pockets for ammunition and handed most of it to Pepper before standing in line. “If we go through the lobby, we can get your bow.”

“Excellent. Stay close.”

She hopped up over the bricks and turned to help a stiletto-wearing Pepper, who eventually threw the shoes to the floor in a fit of disgust.

Aerla sighed dejectedly. “Shame.”

A small laugh answered her, and it brightened the dusty air as they traversed down the bedraggled corridor. They passed the corner where Aerla had stashed her victim, and she swore viciously when the body had gone from its place. The floor was thick with debris and it was clear to see one set of footprints approach the hiding place, and two sets leaving it.

“What’s wrong?” Happy asked with one hand on Pepper’s still-shaking shoulder.

“I left someone, if he’s gone it means now someone knows I’m here, and the playing field is no longer level.” Aerla ground her teeth together and looked towards the far too empty atrium. “This isn’t going to be good.”

The dust was settling but her nose was still useless. _The dust was settling._ Where were all of the bad guys, what had been the point of this fire-laced excursion? Aerla looked back at Pepper who was staring forlornly at a piece of ruined art on one listing wall. She was here nearly every day; her routine was set in stone, Stark the only thing in her life that served to shake that predictability.

“What would you have done today if Stark hadn’t returned?”

Pepper fumbled for a moment, but then her perfect mental schedule kicked in and she answered thoughtfully, “I had to postpone a few meetings, nothing important.”

“Who with?”

“Some shareholders, a SHIELD representative, Justin Ham-“

Aerla focused on the familiar name. “Why SHIELD?”

“Budgetary review, we supply them with funding, they wanted an increase.”

Aerla’s brain stuttered for a moment, completely unable to understand why Stark was subsidising the organisation that was bothering him so much. But that was Stark, impulsive and a magnet for danger. She forced her mind past the stuck cogs and tried to reason.

“Were you going to give it to them?”

“I wanted to, Tony didn’t, something about paying his own employer.”

Aerla wanted to smile at that Stark-sounding deprecation, but there were more important things at hand. Without funding, SHIELD would need to find other avenues of capital; could it be a rival company? No, even businesses weren’t that cutthroat, not in the bombs and blood type of way, anyway. Perhaps a simple enemy of SHIELD then, allowing them to hit Stark’s profits at the same time.

_Stark._

They would have had tabs on him, been waiting for him to leave the helicarrier. Take out Stark, take out his company, take out SHIELD. But they weren’t counting on Aerla being by his side – she remembered why she loved being an unknown.

“Stay here until I get to the security barrier, if I don’t get shot at, follow me over and we’ll head for the door; if I do, I’ll meet you back at the office.”

Pepper paled at the two options, evidently not liking either of them, but their alternatives were few and Aerla needed to get to Stark. Without him, the Avengers would crumble. He was the monetary support and the cutting humour that kept them going, they needed him.

She wouldn’t fail him again.

Aerla darted across the lobby, her ears straining for the sounds of triggers or inhaled breaths. She froze for all of three seconds, making her a tempting target for anyone watching, but nothing happened. Pepper began to move so Aerla held her palm up, wanting to retrieve her bow before they entered the open space.

The man that had held the remote lay slumped across the floor, his body peppered with bullet holes. Security had eventually taken care of the threat and must have scarpered at the alarm, for there were no others around her.

Aerla put her back to the human pair and heaved the safe from under tables and debris. It was dented in places but mostly intact, its keypadded door locked solidly, so she called a question over her shoulder.

“One, nine, four, three.” Happy replied, and Pepper gave him a look that said that it was the most stupid of numbers that he could come up with.

Her bow back in her hands was like holding the hand of a long-lost lover, and her quiver on her back relieved the tension on her shoulders as it put physical weight on them. This was better, she was prepared now, she could take on anything.

There really was not enough fletching against her fingers.

_Damn it._

 

* * *

 

Aerla had never been happier to see a stupidly flash car than she was at that moment. She had no idea what Stark had done, but the premises were empty, devoid of life both good and bad. Where the Hell were the people who had caused this?

She needed to get to Stark like a pain along her jaw. Pepper was safe, Happy could take care of her, but Stark was running about in a half-assed suit that couldn’t fly.

“Go straight to the tower and don’t stop until you’ve locked the doors behind you, do you understand me?” Aerla said to Happy, who nodded confidently, taking her commands in his stride. Pepper nervously palmed her gun so Aerla turned to her next. “To the tower, keep your finger off the trigger but shoot anything that looks threatening.”

_Iron Man and I can take a bullet, but no one else can_ , she wanted to add, but thought Pepper looked pale enough already.

Pepper calmed now that she was in the car, the familiar space settling her. “Tell Tony he owes me a new pair of shoes.”

“As long as you promise to stab him with them, sure.”

Pepper smiled, just a little, and then hardened, her concern for Stark palpable. “Go.”

“Ride hard.” Aerla grinned, and then bolted back towards the crumbling building. “Stark?”

Jarvis’s smooth tones always managed to make her feel better, and this time was no different. His words, however, had the opposite effect. “Mr Stark has removed his helmet, ma’am.”

“For the love of- why?”

“I believe he was angered by his suit’s comparative lack of power.”

He didn’t have his HUD, in other words. “I’m going to put you in his _brain_ when I find him.”

“What a terrifying thought, ma’am.”

Aerla laughed reluctantly and let the AI tell her where to go; he knew the layout far better than she did. Relief had her sighing when she found Stark in a darkened room, the only light coming from the makeshift computer screen that he was manipulating. It played over the hard lines of his face, making his frown seem harsher than it actually was.

So focused on his lines of exhaustion, she almost didn’t notice the dark figure that stealthily approached his back. Aerla smiled in the shadows and pulled an arrow from her dwindling quiver, a potentially risky shot, but it would be worth it to see Stark’s reaction.

Aerla took her sweet time, only a little sadistically, and waited until the would-be assassin was poised over Stark’s shoulder before she shot them in the throat. Stark jerked so fast that Aerla heard his suit creak in protestation. Perhaps her voice was a little too smug when she said, “Watch your back, Glow.”

He squinted into the darkness that cloaked her and swore under his breath. “What is it with archers and hiding?”

“We like to get the jump on people,” she replied with a laugh as she joined him in the light, pleased that she shared one of her favourite pastimes with Clint. She wiped her arrow’s gory point on the dead man’s clothes and stored it back in her quiver again.

Aerla opened her mouth to bitch at Stark for disposing of his helmet, but then Jarvis’s voice rang out of her earpiece and he sounded scarily urgent. “I recommend re-joining Miss Potts.”

She and Stark shared an apprehensive look that lasted a split, anxious second before tearing away from the computer.

She had gotten it wrong, Stark wasn’t the beginning of the domino effect, it was Pepper. She was the cut that would draw his heart’s blood, the final line of escape to a world of meaningless pain.

Even Natasha had kept a close eye on Pepper, but Aerla had left her to the mercy of gun-toting mortals so that she could assuage the irrational urge of standing at Stark’s side, of ensuring that he was safe. _Soft, ridiculous, entirely too human._

Entirely too human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a kudos or a comment if you enjoyed this update, every bit of feedback means the world and encourages me to keep writing!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and secret-agent fondness, are all mine


	17. Surprise and Survival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerla twisted until something tore and then she leaped, Stark's trust tight on her shoulders as pain bloomed in her leg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oy, if I thought updating two stories a week was difficult, updating them to two sites is murder. This will catch up with the other site ASAP (and I'll post my BBC Musketeers OCxAramis here soon, too), but in the meantime, please enjoy chapter 17 - Stark will be the death of me, I know it.

> "If you can keep your head when all about you  
>  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;  
>  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,  
>  But make allowance for their doubting too:  
>  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,  
>  Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,  
>  Or being hated don't give way to hating,  
>  And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise
> 
> Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it."
> 
> \- Rudyard Kipling,  _'If'_

 

A steady stream of obscenities left Aerla's mouth as they raced through the crumbling building. Stark couldn't yell at her any louder than she was already yelling at herself, but he made a good effort, "You didn't get rid of them?"

"I did! I put them in the bloody car," she snarled in her own defence. All they would have had to do was drive away and  _keep Pepper safe._

Jarvis supplied the needed information and his anxiety-laced voiced made Aerla want to  _sprint_. "It would appear that the car has been appropriated."

"Appropriated?! I left them with  _two_ guns."

It should have been the easiest thing in the world, but Aerla had screwed herself. She had thought her presence would make them focus on Stark, but the opposite had happened. They had waited for her to run and closed in on two mortals that didn't know how to fight.

_Hell, this is all my fault._

Stark continued his angry shouting, "Why are you even here?"

"You needed me."

"Pepper clearly needed you more!"

"If you died because you were too stupid to watch your back, she would have killed me herself."

He paused for a breathless moment before nodding a little too smugly than the situation warranted. "Good point."

They burst out of a side door and Jarvis spoke from the speaker rather than the inner part of the earpiece, his need to update his inventor making him search for other ways to contact the ridiculously-helmetless Stark. "Sir, faster, I have lost contact with the car."

Aerla prepared to outstrip Stark, regardless of how overpowered her agility would seem, but then his arc-reactor whirred and suddenly he hovered a metre in the air.

She panted in surprise, "I thought you said-"

"It's not quite flying," he shouted and made her curse his speed. "Not enough power to take you with me, kid." That was plainly evidenced as he barely crested a building, his toes clunking against the brick edges.

Stark disappeared over the roof, quicker as the crow flies, and Aerla was left slacking on the floor. She needed to be  _faster,_  but Jarvis's anxious recommendation still wasn't appreciated. "I think it's time, ma'am."

The dust was settling but her nose was still useless and she had two humans to protect, one that held Stark's heart in her soft but firm hands, and Aerla had been  _entrusted_ \- "Fuck it."

She had failed Stark once already, not again, not with this.

Even if he hated her for what she was, at least he and Pepper would be safe.

Snarling at the stars for forcing her hand, Aerla yanked her piece out of her ear and shifted, her fur releasing in an agitated sigh of relief and determination. Grabbing the tiny piece of equipment in her teeth, she sprinted after the fading sounds of arc reactor power, easily gaining on it with four paws digging into the concrete.

Stark left the building proper and headed out over the car park, but there was no sign of anything that might have waylaid the vehicle. A squeal of tires caught their attention and the flash car peeled out of the lot, only to be smashed to a stop when a suit of iron came crashing down on its hood. Stark had landed in a sprawl rather than a stand, his power fluctuating too much for any finesse.

Aerla knew before Stark did that they weren't in there, it was just a distraction.

She turned on her tail, just barely hearing Jarvis's imploring tones from the machinery in-between her jaws. Wide windows and doors decorated the front of this building, separated from the main front entrance. Aerla's skin began to crawl as she approached it and she reluctantly knew what this structure would contain.

She dived through a shattered window and took everything in with one frantic grey blink. The crushed arc reactor shivered with leftover power in the middle of the room and it took effort to keep her fur on. At one side of the chamber huddled Pepper over a prone Happy, and dotted around them stood balaclavas and guns.

_Guns; bloody humans and their high-powered tech._

Aerla didn't wait for their collective shock to end and launched at the closest figure, in one glorious clamp-and-pull tearing his throat out. Vaulting from him to the next, the rest finally overcame the sight of a bloodied wolf that chose her targets with deadly precision.

Yells and swears turned the air blue as she darted from body to body to taint it red, choosing to kill some and using others as meat shields. There were too many, too many bad guys and Stark wasn't here and Pepper was so vulnerable. One bullet would kill her, just like the one that a man with a scar under his left eyebrow was aiming directly at her-

Aerla twisted until something tore and then she leaped, Stark's trust tight on her shoulders as pain bloomed in her leg. The hurt was negligible but the invasive metal made her quiver in distaste. Pepper shrieked but then Aerla was off again, hunting the one that dared shoot at someone under her protection.

Something smashed through the entire front window and the shouts let her knew what it was. Stark had finally arrived and it took all of the focus off of her, giving her enough time to once again overpower the now-terrified man and force her teeth through soft skin. He tried to scream but blood bubbled down his neck and she knew that she had caught his jugular.  _Sloppy, eager; he deserved worse._

Aerla returned her attention to Pepper who was foolishly shielding Happy's still-unconscious body with her own; she was defenceless, the guns forgotten in her distress. Another anonymous target made itself known by stepping closer to the woman, too close for Aerla to deal with them with claws.

Hidden by his back, she jumped into the shift and drew her blade in another lethally swift move. It slipped into place at the base of his spine and Aerla might have enjoyed his cry a little too much, but then he crumpled and Pepper's eyes were so very wide.

"Take this, and  _use_ it," Aerla enforced as she snatched the fallen man's gun and pushed the grip into Pepper's quaking hand. The woman took it, but Aerla didn't wait to see what she did with it, because Stark was desperately outnumbered and his natural spotlight wasn't helping him.

Three shots slightly evened the odds but then Aerla was officially out of arrows for the first time in centuries. She slung her bow back into her quiver and chased down a coward that tried to run. Her laugh was hysterical and bloodthirsty and she savoured the suck of flesh that accompanied her blade's yanked removal.

Later, Aerla would thoroughly pound Stark for constantly leaving his back open for attack, but for now all she could do was throw her last weapons at his almost-killers. Bereft of her human methods, she shifted once more and sprang a little faster with the doubling energy and battle-excitement singing in her veins. Her fur was coated in scarlet and it laved along her tongue until she panted happily.

She bashed into a readying rifle that shot into the ceiling instead, and then she clawed the wielder's eyes out before they could aim again. The remaining breathing bodies were simply that, the soon-to-be-dead, and it was with a cooling enthusiasm that Aerla dispatched them. At one point she saw Pepper dragging Happy behind a pillar, her gun now infuriatingly in Stark's hand when his repulsors had sputtered one last time.

The last one drew Aerla away, her pumping adrenaline hearing the quick gasps of an escapee. He fell easily, too easily, really, but she couldn't draw the finale out like she wanted to, because there were people still relying on her and her protective nature couldn't leave them for long.

Pepper was screeching when Aerla tried to bring her senses back to normal, tried vainly to draw her human skin back over her excited fur. If Pepper's yells of anger and terror were any indication, she would not want to see  _'a wolf, Tony'_  in the open again. Aerla dragged her quivering hide to the arc reactor's cold-yet-hot glass and let the offensiveness of it send her fur tumbling back inside.

Aerla couldn't stop the cry that sounded from her hoarse throat when her wounds stretched and realigned, the bullet in her leg deeper than she had thought and, for a split second, brushing bone. White noise reigned until her shift finished and the metal ended up somewhere in her thigh, painful but bearable.

Aerla saw them before they saw her, Stark hovering over Pepper who was hovering over a still unconscious Happy. Her injured leg dragged a little on the floor and the scuffing had them both flinching in her direction. She was limping and covered in blood – hardly any of it hers – and remarked nonchalantly, "If we're still counting kills, I think I win."

Something that she hoped was humour glinted in Stark's face, but Pepper watched her cautiously. A cut marred the woman's cheek and Aerla automatically went to check it out; regardless of their reactions, she wanted to make sure they were safe.

"Let me see," Aerla urged gently, and Pepper's scared eyes that jumped from her to Stark hurt more than anything else had today.

And then Stark, wonderful, surprising Stark, said, "It's okay, Pep."

Pepper glanced at him and absorbed some of that reckless stability that he seemed to exude, and when she looked back, there was uneasy bravery there. The wound was clean, just a scratch that would heal up within the week; it was the mental one that would scar.

"I'm sorry," Aerla murmured when Stark walked off to search a corpse.

"Thank you," Pepper replied quietly, and looked at Stark over her shoulder. It wasn't gratitude for her apology, but for looking out for the foolhardy man. Aerla smiled slightly and Pepper mirrored it, continuing, "You would think I'd find this normal by now, wouldn't you?"

Aerla laughed ruefully and looked at the man who was gingerly plucking her blade from someone's back and then thrusting with it. "I'm not considered normal, Pepper."

Pepper frowned in confusion for some reason and it looked like she wanted to say something, but Aerla rose to meet Stark's approach with both of her blades in his hands.

"Old school," he commented casually, "But I like it."

If he changed his relaxed stance, he still couldn't get her in time; he was out of power and she was supernaturally quick. She was a survivor, and sometimes that meant running away.

But, perhaps, she didn't need to run for once, because Stark only had a thoughtful look his face as he offered her weapons, hilt first.

"What's this on the end, some sort of crest?"

She didn't want to give him the answer that would let him know more than she was already comfortable with, so when she reached out, she expected him to tense. He didn't; she waited for it, looked for it, but it didn't happen.

Trust stretched like a spider-web thin thread between them, and they were both being careful not to break it.

"Thanks, Glow."

She used the nickname on purpose, to soften the blow of whatever he thought had happened, and to her utter relief, he nodded once. She had escaped judgement for the moment, and so she finally let herself slump to the floor and sheathed one blade, driving the other's point into the ragged hole in her leg.

Stark did flinch then, and Pepper looked like she might throw up as he said uneasily, "We can go to the hospital, kid."

_Kid._

The bullet was still deeper than she had expected so she gritted her teeth and wiggled the blade. She had to get it out before the skin healed over and she felt them both watching in horrified fascination. Finally, it popped free and Aerla sighed, the absence of foreign burn almost relaxing in comparison. "No need."

She picked up the evil thing and examined it, grimacing as she said, "This almost had your name on it, Pepper."

"Calculations show an 86% mortality rate if the bullet had not been interrupted," Jarvis helpfully provided, his tones settled back into smooth and unconcerned.

_Interrupted by my leg,_ she thought with morbid amusement _,_ a leg which had already stopped bleeding and would support her weight with relative ease. She wasn't glory hunting by detailing Pepper's brush with death, but Aerla would take all the credit that she could get when her fur was an open secret. Pepper turned a little green but Stark just held out his arm, surprising her once again.

Aerla took it with a wince of pain and pulled herself up. "Remind me to never consider paper work boring, again."

He steadied her with one hand when she would have swayed and his lip twitched. "Are you enjoying your holiday?"

Aerla looked into calculating eyes that glinted with humour instead of malice and decided that Stark's recklessness knew no bounds – and she loved him for it. Pepper stared at them in stunned silence when they both began to laugh, the noise sharp and a little manic in the presence of death, but they were alive and that was all that mattered.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the afternoon had passed in tactful silence once the hysteria had faded, and it was only when Aerla was exploring the empty kitchen and staring numbly at a new, fresh, unopened box of her favourite teabags that Jarvis spoke up.

"I did think it was time, ma'am."

Aerla fisted a hand against the cupboard and wanted to know how the Hell Jarvis was able to reason against her, and say things that made such frustrating sense. Stark hadn't said anything, hadn't even looked at her since they had returned to the tower, and Aerla didn't know what to do about it. There were no endless questions, no painful wariness; he was just acting so…  _normal_.

Her tension became obvious when the cup in her hand shattered. Growling at it did nothing to change the situation, so she heaved a sigh and wondered if Stark even owned a dust pan and brush.

"Please move aside, ma'am, I will deal with it."

"It's fine, Jarvis-" she muttered before being cut off by a whirring sound. Spinning around and seeing part of the wall open had her jaw dropping.  _Is any of this building actually brick and mortar?_

A small, white robot came bustling out of its home and settled by her thigh. She had to restrain the urge to either flee from the tingling metal, or crouch to examine the adorable thing.

The latter won out. "Jarvis, what is this, it's so cute."

"It is a cleaning intelligence, ma'am."

"You aren't controlling it?"

"I have influence, but it has been programmed to deal with the calamity that tends to occur around Mr Stark."

The little robot began to hoover up the glass as she laughed in amazement. When it had finished, it turned as if to watch her. Tentatively lifting a hand, Aerla obeyed an urge that would be more suited to an animal than the metallic creature in front of her. It slowly rolled forward to push into her palm and she almost fell over in surprise.

_By the stars, they do have personalities._

"Stop distracting it."

Aerla was so fascinated by the creature that Stark's voice didn't serve to startle her. "Does it know I'm touching it?"

Scuffed dress shoes appeared by her side as she continued to pet his invention. "No, but it's aware you're showing  _affection_ ," he dripped derision at the last, as if she was a fool for doing so. When he nudged it with his foot and urged, "Scoot", it scuttled away back to its hiding place.

Aerla watched it go and then stood to frown at Stark. "Could you make it know?"

"If I wanted to."

"Maybe you should." He raised an eyebrow at her so she rested against the counter and shrugged. "It might help with your suit, and it frees you up to work on other bits."

They were talking about normal things – well, normal for a genius inventor – but uncertainty had Aerla watching him as carefully as he was watching her. His gaze was shrewd, telling her that he was analysing everything that she said and did. It was unnerving to think that his far too perceptive brain was picking her apart to see how she worked.

Aerla wanted him to  _say_ something, to make it clear what he thought of her fur, of her hiding the truth; but he was infuriatingly impassive. She wanted to bop him on the nose and see if it would make him scowl, because at least she knew how to deal with that.

Humans had never been this difficult to read.

His jaw jutted forward in thought and she assumed that this was going to be it; he was going to sneer and cast her out, like always.

"Could you, um, change, please? It's just, you know, the blood."

Aerla blinked at the absence of confrontation and haltingly took note of the drying stickiness that still covered her. "Oh, yeah, sure… Into what?"

Jarvis, as always, had the answer. "I took the liberty of supplying some alternate clothing, ma'am."

Stark's brow puckered briefly when she smiled and said, "Lifesaver, Jarvis."

"Yeah, okay," Stark replied calmly. "You do that. Then, meet me downstairs. There's something I want you to see."

With that, he strode off towards the lift and disappeared, leaving Aerla bewildered.  _Was this it_ ; was he just going to pretend that nothing had happened?In a way, that was worse than anything else, because his egotistical opinion  _mattered._ He was just a ridiculously clever mortal that possessed far more compassion than he let on, and he was  _funny_ , and he didn't take shit from anyone.

He was also not trying to shoot or castigate her, and that was unsettlingly comforting. Maybe Bruce had already paved the way and she was just a blip on the radar in comparison, it was not as if she had to worry about the stability of high rises like the Hulk did.

Once she had changed – Jarvis was uncannily accurate with measurements – she headed to the lift and let the AI take her wherever she was supposed to be going. It was with another layer of shock that she beheld a room- no, a  _floor_ of technology. The smell of alcoholic engine oil and electricity whirled around her, and it was the same scent that was embedded in Stark's skin.

Counters, benches, tables, desks, black, silver, marble, and metal; it was an inventor's paradise. Equipment and tools coated every surface, and every wall and  _piece of air_ had a screen on it. Stark glanced up from where he was working on something when she said, "No cleaning robots in here, then?"

"They keep breaking my stuff."

Aerla hid a smile at that practical yet grumpy remark and took his inattention to mean that she could explore the area. It was almost too much to take in, paper and plastic and  _debris_ were littered everywhere, but it was the debris of a genius who couldn't concentrate on something for more than five minutes.

That is, something that wasn't his suits. Graphical representations lined his work areas, fully formed 6-foot ones to single pieces in perfect detail. Her skin crawled as she approached the charged particles of air but they were too fascinating not to; when she batted one, it spun in circles and Aerla couldn't help her laugh of delight.

Her eye caught on a small circular glow perched precariously on an edge and Aerla headed for it, because it looked very similar to Stark's arc reactor. Before she reached it though, she passed something far more interesting: a face plate.

Aerla glanced behind her but Stark was too busy arguing with one of his amazing robots to keep an eye on her, so she took advantage of his seemingly complacent attitude and placed the unfinished helmet against her eyes.

"Hello, ma'am," Jarvis said quietly from the piece of amazing metal, and she murmured a delighted reply.

Then he showed her Stark's world.

"Holy fuck," Aerla bit out when light filled the eye sockets and everything flashed into shades of blue. Data, so much data, cascaded in front of her and every dart of her pupils brought more statistics as Jarvis provided for her sight.

She tore it from her face, unable to deal with such incomprehensible technology and looked at Stark with amazement a little short of horror. There was so much information, so many things that he could call up and manipulate at the drop of a hat; it was mind-boggling, especially for someone who had lived for so long that she tried to forget more than she remembered.

Stark glanced up and then looked at the robot at his side. "What have I told you about leaving stuff out?"

The AI made a noise that sounded so sad that it startled Aerla out of her disorientation. "R2-D2?"

Stark smirked and returned to his work as he answered, "No, DUM-E, actually." The robot lifted its metal tongs and  _waved_ at her, making Stark look disgustedly at it. "You are such a suck up."

Aerla watched the man who had seemingly taken her fur in his stride and who spent his down-time perfecting his superhero persona and talking to the entities that he had made himself. It struck her suddenly that he had been lonely; all of that talent and pride, and Tony Stark had been lonely. His familiarity with his robots told her that he must idly talk all the time, no one else being able to understand the million-mile-a-minute speed that his brain was permanently set to.

But knowledge was power and Stark was a hoarder. "Why are you showing me this?"

"Well, there is the small fact of you taking a bullet for Pepper. Tiny, really, but you know, I'm grateful."

_I only barely caught it._ Turning with a frown on her face, Aerla shook her head. "You knew I would, that was part of the deal. Why are you showing me  _this?_ "

She surveyed the room, his secrets. A wall opened, an array of suits meeting her eyes, in varying stages of completion and all differing slightly.  _Hell,_ he had one for every day of the week, and who was to say that he didn't have more stashed away somewhere?

Stark watched her as Jarvis moved the battered suit that she knew the most onto his tinkering counter. He clutched a welder in one hand and experimentally fired it into the air until Aerla couldn't take the scrutiny anymore.

"Look, can you just come out with it?"

Something like satisfaction might have raced across his face as he asked, "Am I making you nervous?"

"Yes!" She cried agitatedly, running her hand through her hair to try and alleviate the tension.

He continued to stare and Aerla refused to think about how much it would hurt if he criticised her. At some point along the line, he had gone from an arrogant bastard who rubbed her the wrong way, to an arrogant bastard who made her laugh and whose inventions endlessly fascinated her.

His opinion  _mattered_  and Aerla could feel her armour buckle once more, this time with a distinctly Stark shaped imprint.  _Damn it._

The waiting was torture, and then he simply shrugged. "You're no green rage monster, kid."

He turned back to his welding and Aerla blinked in stupefaction.  _That was it?_ A life time of hiding because the memory of fire still burned her dreams and now, a thousand years later, a third person in as many weeks had taken her fur in their stride?

The roar of heat that eerily echoed her memories stopped and Stark remarked casually, "You seem surprised."

Aerla opened her mouth to reply but wasn't quite sure what to say. She didn't know how far his tolerance would go, if he thought that she was but a mere mutant, it wasn't very surprising that he had dealt with it so well. But Stark was observant, who could tell how much he had worked out for himself?

"When I, ah, told people in the past, it didn't go very well."

"I imagine those people didn't know Bruce, and, hey, you can control it, right?"

Aerla glanced at him, saw his prying ploy for what it was, and decided to play right into his hands, because he already knew that she could.  _Too perceptive_. "Yes."

He shrugged once more and said unconcernedly, "Well, there you go. It's the unpredictability people don't like. Pass me that wrench."

Aerla found herself at a loss again, but numbly handed the tool to him. Stark grunted in gratitude and his attention returned to his work, the clinks and clangs of metal giving a backdrop to her incredulous reeling.

She absent-mindedly watched him work and marvelled at how far humanity had come; technology, social behaviour,  _mutation_. Aerla held no illusions that her magic would be considered normal; but then again, neither were mythological hammers or beings from other planets.

Aerla wanted to ask questions and yet say nothing, she wanted to understand what it was about  _this_ man that made him both so uncaring and yet sentimental. She wanted to know what it was about  _this_ week that had rocked her world view so much, but that answer was obvious, it was the Avengers.

Stark let her watch and answered her quiet questions in his matter-of-fact way, and Aerla began to understand and to hand him things before he had to ask for them. Eventually, his and DUM-E's comparative inelegance made her growl and push him out of the way so that she could tighten one of the tiny screws without scratching everything around it. She had forgotten to be wary of him in her frustration and she could have sworn something like victory had made him smirk.

He made good use of her steady hands after that.

Now Aerla's fingers were covered in cuts and burns where gloves had been discarded and forgotten as she dealt with the intricate details. Her injuries were superficial and would heal within the hour, and if Stark thought it strange that they didn't bleed and her leg wasn't limping, he didn't say anything.

Another point for the surprising man.

He turned the light she had been using off when she tried to finish soldering a minute coupling. "Get out of my workshop, kid."

Aerla reluctantly put her work down and joined him in the lift, saying a little smugly, "I said you would benefit from touch-sensitive robots."

"I've been doing fine, what's the point of implementing it?"

She wiggled her fingers at him. "Because you don't have the fine touch."

He sniffed disdainfully at her, the arrogant genius once more. "The scratches give it.. personality."

"You can get scuffs from fights with bad guys, not with DUM-E."

"Can you stop crushing on my robots, please?"

His snarky request made her smile as she replied, "They're sweet! It's not my fault you're a terrible taskmaster, they need affection, you've starved them."

Stark simply stared and then excessively rolled his eyes when she thanked Jarvis for taking them back up to the penthouse. "They aren't robot puppies for you to fawn over."

Aerla grinned at that disgusted comment but couldn't deny it, making the robots aware of touch would only encourage her tactile nature. It was like having a pet – or in Jarvis's case, a friend – that would never die, and to an immortal that was enchanting. "Even computers deserve a bit of love, Glow."

When they reached the wet bar, Stark proceeded to show off, quizzing her on his oldest bottles and his rarest brands. Aerla demurely pointed out that there was an awful lot of 'Barton' on those shelves and Stark sneered in response and poured her a glass.

It all became a little fuzzy after that.

Later, they were laughing about something to do with Loki and 'Famous Grouse', and in between snatches of frenzied cackles they made their way over to the softer seating area. Aerla curling into the dark armchair that she had sat on earlier, as Stark sprawled on his cream sofa.

She yawned until her jaw clicked and appreciated feeling comfortable and safe. It felt strange to feel that when the man slumped mere feet across from her was the same man she had thought would threaten her first. She wasn't sure what was more unexpected, Stark's steadfastness, or how the line of trust between them had thickened into a rope.

Aerla sighed when her magic tried to rouse contentedly but the oppressive technology kept it bound. It wasn't a nice feeling, but anything was better than the alien sensation that had touched her last night.

Suddenly she felt less comfortable and far less safe. If that  _thing_  was coming for them, Aerla wasn't sure whether they could do anything about it, but it would only be bested by a team, not individuals. "We should go back to the helicarrier tomorrow."

Stark grumbled something incoherent that sounded derogatory, but rolled onto his back when she didn't answer. "I can put 'em off."

Aerla smiled into the lit darkness, she would have liked some more time away from SHIELD, but she knew it couldn't happen. "We still don't know if that thing is coming."

Stark grunted noncommittally in response and then muttered, "Remind me to ask you about that."

Knowing that Stark would fall asleep soon, she murmured, "No."

"Killjoy."

"Lightweight."

When his snores broke the silence, Aerla turned over to let the wide stripes of moonlight from the huge windows bathe her face. New York lay beneath them and beyond it, the rest of vulnerable Earth.

It was threatened now, and it would be for the rest of time. Mutation had not progressed enough to provide a formidable fighting force against something like Loki again, but it should not fall to just the Avengers to defend until they dropped from weariness. Earth would not survive on its own, and neither would she.

Aerla idly considered the thought that normally only occurred when she was at her lowest,  _what if Thor doesn't return soon?_  She had no reason to think that he would, even hope had been harshly tempered by time unimaginable. Earth had been attacked with alien technology over fifty years ago and it had taken that long for  _Asgardr_  to respond, what if it took another half century?

She had laughed today, had smiled and fought with worthy comrades all week, she was  _enjoying_ herself _._  If she left, SHIELD would stand against antagonists alone, blind to the manipulations of gods that had doomed their planet a millennium ago. The Avengers had welcomed her when she had been left behind by so many others, human and celestial alike.

They had dented her armour and, now, she would miss them.

She, who had waited a thousand years, could stand waiting a little longer if it was by their side.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my hugs and thanks for reading, please get into contact if you're enjoying it or just want to chat! Perhaps you have some ideas about what will happen and I can smile cryptically and drop outrageous hints...
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and blood bathing, all belong to me.


	18. Returns and Recoils

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Stark's robots were starved of love, she had been starved of connection, like a climber that crested a mountain where the air is too thin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun-dun-duuuun, the background is done and the relationships are set. Like a rolling snowball, s'only going to get bigger and better from here, and this is me throwing it at you! Enjoy, mes amis.

 

> "Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him-he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory."
> 
> \- Victor Hugo,  _'Les Miserables'_

 

Aerla stirred when Stark did, his grumbles scratching against her sore skull. She growled something unintelligible at him and he stopped immediately. Cracking open an eyelid saw him frowning at her in utter confusion, but then he nodded in slow realisation and muttered, "Wolf."

Terror gripped her chest but then she remembered that it was  _Stark_ , he already knew and hadn't tried to kill her. That thin thread of trust had thickened, so she gratefully closed her eyes and told him to shut up.

His amused snort made her smile and then Stark shuffled off somewhere. Aerla burrowed into the chair when his steps turned into stomps and she repeated her order more insistently. He paused for a moment but, unfortunately, it wasn't out of kindness.

"Is your headache worse than mine or is it some animal shit?"

Her grin was completely reluctant. It was startling how pleased she was that he was treating her as something  _normal_. Stark astonished her almost as much as Jarvis did - perhaps it was hereditary. "Both, now, please, shut up."

"Weird."

' _Weird'_  was one of the friendlier terms that she had heard over the centuries, and so she took it in her stride. Stark was apparently happy to just idly insult her because he wandered off again and returned to push a bottle of water into her lazily outstretched hand.

Aerla stared at it for a moment, finding it harder to accept his gruff friendliness than he had accepted her fur. She murmured her thanks and set about devouring the cool liquid, sighing in delight when the fuzziness in her head receded with each gulp.

It was when clarity reigned once more that she decided that Stark was an arrogant fool.

"You made Happy take my bow."

He didn't deny the accusation, instead something frustratingly like triumph soared across his face, and it made her snarl at him, "You sacrificed Pepper's safety just to find out one of my  _tricks?_ "

Stark,  _the bastard_ , rolled his eyes at her as if she was being ridiculously melodramatic. "She was never in any danger, even if I hadn't had my suit, you were there."

Aerla's jaw dropped at that shocking compliment hidden under cool nonchalance.  _More trust,_ it fell like a comfortable weight on her shoulders, and it felt nice. Stark shrugged before she could say anything, "You're too much like Cap to let anything happen to an innocent."

Her eyes narrowed at that sardonic statement. "Are you trying to insult me? 'Cause I would take that as a compliment."

"You would."

"Loyalty isn't something to scoff at, Glow."

"No, but white knighting is."

Aerla drew herself up indignantly, offended on both her and Steve's behalf. "You think he backs me up because I'm  _female?_ "

"You remember when he was born, right? You remind him of Peggy."

She faltered, the name drawing a blank. Stark continued matter-of-factly, "She was a British spy, drafted into the US Army, they were stationed together. If Cap hadn't napped in the ice…"

_Oh._

Aerla dragged her hand through her hair and slumped in guilt. She could have dealt with Steve's inherent warmth, but in reality she had manipulated his long lost love for a woman who she reminded him of.

Stark exhaled exasperatedly. "See? That's exactly what I mean. It's not your fault, so you share an accent and have the salute down pat – also weird, by the way – it's not like you did it on purpose."

Aerla deliberately ignored the military connection –  _too perceptive_ – and let the rest of his words comfort her. She tipped her head back onto the arm of the chair and sighed, "Still makes me feel bad though."

"That's because you're an idiot."

"I love you, too, Glow," she called out when he walked away from her. He paused at the opening door to his lift and raised an enquiring eyebrow at her, inclining his head downstairs. Aerla grinned and scrambled from her tangle of sleepy limbs to join him in the metal cube.

Stark's life suited her quite well.

 

* * *

 

She inattentively tightened tiny screws and linked fragile metal lacing to form the innards of Stark's suit. Jarvis had assigned her a counter after the bickering had gotten louder than the welding. DUM-E had decided to join her after one too many of Stark's derogatory remarks and Aerla had snapped, "If you created him, it's your fault. Stop being mean."

The victimised robot had rolled over to gratefully rub his metal tongs against her arm and Aerla had to hide a smile as Stark called out, "Don't even think about unionising."

At the first moment of silence, fire and metal quieting for a blissful few seconds, Aerla asked, "Why does Fury want you working on the staff so badly?"

Stark paused, and the look he gave her said that he knew she didn't know as much as she pretended to. Phil had given her information but only what she had asked for, and she was starting to realise that she had asked the wrong questions.

Aerla didn't like being on the back foot.

"It's called Phase 2," Stark replied, and nodded in shared exasperation when she scoffed at the dramatic name. "Yeah, I know. SHIELD was using the Tesseract to make new weapons."

Aerla recoiled in disgust and Stark watched her thoughtfully. "Funny, that's the exact same reaction that Thor had."

She reigned in the alarm and levelled a sceptical look at him,  _way too perceptive._  "Decent people everywhere should have that reaction. The Tesseract isn't right for Earth."

"Whatever, my dad was looking for Cap but he found the Tesseract. SHIELD have been working on it ever since, but their results are nowhere near as good as HYDRA's."

Aerla hummed in concentration. "They can't use your dad, so they're using you."

Stark grimaced for some reason and she only just caught it before he pulled his welder's mask down again. They worked in the roar of fire and burning metal as she mulled over the implications.

When he stopped for another breather, she continued, "But why?"

"Because I'm awesome?"

She smiled at her busy hands. "No, I mean, why demand Phase 2?"

"Honestly? I don't think Fury likes the thought of being weak."

"Because he has to stand behind the Avengers?"

Stark pointed a finger at her to say that she had hit the nail on the head.

It made sense, Fury wanted to lord it up over everyone, and Aerla had shown how easily the Avengers might decide that they didn't need him. Steve on her defence at the bridge, Bruce asking for her when he had woken up, even Clint vouching for her would cause ripples.

Fury risked losing his weapons.

Aerla didn't for a moment think that she possessed any such clout, but SHIELD's apparent obsession with alien technology concerned her.

And the thought of losing Earth to just any idiot with a god-machine made her positively sick.

"Has he gotten anywhere with it?"

"It's one of the areas Jarvis is having trouble re-accessing."

" _Re_ -accessing?"

"Yeah, when Bruce and I thought Fury had an agenda, we had a look. He did, obviously, and then Cap found a prototype weapon and went all righteous-soldier on him."

"Steve kicked off?" She asked in amazement, and Stark nodded with a dark smile.

"Turns out our resident boy scout doesn't want a remake of what killed him the first time."

"Funny that," Aerla joked, but she couldn't agree with Steve's stance more. It was hard enough to  _see_ Earth progressing almost faster than she could keep up, but Steve had closed his eyes and woken up to a time where humanity had developed almost to the stars from whence the Tesseract came.

Stark winced and immediately looked at her to see if she had seen, damning himself even if she hadn't spotted it – which, of course, she had. He was immediately on the defence. "I'm fine."

"Nice try, come."

"Kid, I'm fine."

"DUM-E, could you get me a first aid kit, please?"

The robot whirred off and Stark grumbled something fierce, stomping over with an expression akin to epic amounts of weariness, as if she had ordered he run a marathon. A throbbing line of red snaked up the back of his hand and she murmured a thank you to DUM-E when he returned.

"Oh, you do the things  _she_  asks you?" Stark said acerbically to the robot, and Aerla laughed when something like a mechanical growl responded. Aerla rooted in the box to find some coolant and cream, laying all the things out that she needed until Stark stated, "You've done this before."

"Many times," she murmured absently and rubbed the salve in, apologising when he flinched. Aerla didn't bother with medicinal remedies, her regeneration could deal with most injuries; but mortals were always getting into scrapes and so she had studied well over the years.

"Will I live, doc?" He bit out sarcastically when she tied a neat bandage around his palm.

"I'm afraid it needs amputating, but you're a clever boy, I'm sure you can make a robotic arm."

"You're hilarious."

"I know." She smiled up at him and enjoyed the humoured glint in his eye. "You're fine. Next time, try wearing a complete suit, works better that way."

"Hurry up with my connector and I can."

Aerla laughed at the grumpy request and spun back to her counter, DUM-E holding the very piece that she needed. She cooed his praises and focused on tiny gears and tinier pincers, letting her mind wander over more questions.

"Do you have any ideas on who attacked you?"

"You evidently do, or you wouldn't have brought it up," Stark said snidely, and she spared him an unimpressed glance.

"Well, as it happens, I think someone's trying to shake your funding of SHIELD and knock you at the same time, so it could be HYDRA."

He watched her thoughtfully for a moment and then shrugged. "Does it matter if it is?"

"Yes? It means they're ready to attack."

"We knew they were anyway."

"No," she paused to remember. "Cap said that they were still rebuilding- Wait, you  _knew_ they were ready and you didn't  _say_ anything?"

"Yeah?"

" _Why?_  We could have avoided going to Stark Industries and getting blown up!"

"But then we wouldn't have known what they wanted."

Aerla narrowed her eyes at his idle response. "So you  _do_ think it's HYDRA?"

"Of course it's them, who else would it be?"

"You're infuriating, I just want you to know that."

"You love me," he murmured, and blanked out her muttered curses by firing up the welder again.

She had calmed down by the time another gap reappeared, maybe that had been his intention,  _annoying man_. "Are you going to tell SHIELD?"

"No, they'll just bitch and then Steve will come over and touch all my stuff."

She tried not to smile and failed. "They need to know, Glow."

"Oh, just like how you're telling them," he dropped his voice to say ominously, "Something is coming?"

"That's different."

"So you admit it wasn't HYDRA's attack that freaked you out?"

Aerla halted in surprise,  _tricky wordsmith._ He had made her differentiate between the two things. "No, I think it's going to be far worse than that."

Stark rolled his eyes. "Look, whether you think you're some sort of psychic that reads dreams and tea leaves, until you know for sure, what's the big deal? It's not like it takes forever to get back to the helicarrier, might as well enjoy yourself while you're 'on holiday', right?"

Aerla nibbled her lip in torn thought. She had already broken her cardinal rule by coming to care for the Avengers; if shit hit the fan tomorrow, she would be there, vicious and happy to fight by their side.

For the first time in centuries she had somewhere to be that appreciated her skills. So SHIELD didn't yet know what she was and Fury would probably kill her for keeping the truth from him, she had people in her court now.

_Why not live a little?_

"Fine, Glow, you win-"

Aerla's ears pricked and then a channelled power arched her spine and had her knees thudding against the floor. It was a painful, overwhelming pleasure that made her eyes blank as her magic roared out to greet the sensation that felt oh-so-similar to her land.

As Stark's robots were starved of love, she had been starved of connection, like a climber that crested a mountain where the air was too thin.

When the sparks cleared and she heard Jarvis rattling off her spiked vitals in a calm tone, she saw Stark crouched in front of her, his brow creased into a frown.

"You alright, kid?"

His concern doused the delight that had sparked through her veins, his hand on her shoulder bringing her crashing back to the planet that she wanted to defend. What game did the  _nornir_  play that they offered her temptation when she had been finally been happy?

Aerla looked into eyes of mortal brown that normally glinted with intellect and dry humour, but were now darkened with worry for  _her_.

Her armour buckled again.

Sudden trepidation and tortured memory had her whispering a disjointed response in a language unknown to him.

" _Asgard_   _comes."_

 

* * *

 

Tony wasn't happy.

He had woken up in the penthouse, and yeah, he had a headache that felt like elephants had used his skull as a pillow, but that meant that he had his  _things_ around him. Whiskey, Jarvis, his 'shop, and apparently, the kid.

It was fairly normal for Tony to wake up and not recognise his surroundings, but for once he was on  _his_ sofa, in  _his_ tower, and then he remembered what had happened the day before.

He had felt pretty damned satisfied when that bomb had gone off, not only because he had been expecting something on his first trip back to reality, but because he knew Aerla wouldn't be able to resist the temptation.

She was like him, she enjoyed the danger, but he hadn't expected her secret to be a furrier version of Bruce. He had wondered what the world was coming to, until he saw her swap to-and-fro, still fully clothed, and hand Pepper a gun, completely in control.

She was a freaking shapeshifter, like something from a  _book._

Gods, werewolves, what was next, vampires? Shit, he hoped it wasn't that, he wasn't sure that he could deal with some glittery fuckwit running around New York. It was bad enough with the occasional human torch or some idiot with blades for hands.

Honestly, sometimes he felt like he was in some sort of drug-induced dream.

But he hadn't delved into that particular recreation for years, and so he had no idea how he was already back on the helicarrier, except that it had everything to do with the kid. That was why he wasn't happy. One of Jarvis's stolen proximity alarms had gone off a split second after Aerla had collapsed mid-sentence.

He was fairly certain that she had been about to say that he was right, so it was even more of a shame that she hadn't finished. Instead, she had spouted some gibberish that he couldn't quite understand and then SHIELD had called.

It was all a little too coincidental for Tony's liking.

Aerla had been damningly quiet on the flight over, but she had brightened sickeningly when a smug Barton was waiting for them in the hangar. The archer had given him a far too self-satisfied look as the two of them gripped each other's forearms and then Barton led her away. He could hear them laughing and insulting each other as he took off his suit,  _freaks._

He knew Barton had been the one that had sicced Aerla on him, but at least it had been someone that actually attempted to follow his line of thought than, say, Steve, who just blinked in confusion and then mumbled something about needing to punch sandbags.

In hindsight, he had actually quite enjoyed the last two days, but he was fairly certain that was because he had been able to attack his suits and resupply his blood alcohol level, not because of some bright-eyed kid who treated his artificial intelligences like they were people.

Although, she had a point with the touch-sensitivity, he had never had a suit that fitted him so perfectly.

He was getting soft.

"Stop flirting and tell me why I'm here," he said a little too snidely as he joined them in the control room, but their childish glee and Bruce's stupid smile was frustrating him. He could still be in his workshop and bothering Pepper – who had once again not forgiven him for being reckless, but she would, she always did.

Tony smirked when they all shot him an unamused glance, but it dropped into a grimace when Fury and his coat whirled in.

"We have an issue."

Tony barely caught the look that Aerla tossed in Bruce's direction, one that hinted of uneasiness. It was the final clarification that he had been looking for ever since he had seen anguish in her eyes when she had fallen in his 'shop.

SHIELD didn't know what she was.

_Interesting._

 

* * *

 

Aerla fidgeted uncomfortably, her anxiety racking up now that she was confronted with Fury's angry eye and the sense that her life was about to take a distressing turn. She edged a little closer to Bruce, silently berating her cowardice but doing it anyway; fresh starlight still lingered in her memory but she felt happier with the Avengers than she had anywhere else in years.

She didn't want to let the happiness go.

"We have a tip-off that someone is coming."

At Fury's ominous statement, Stark casually looked her way. Aerla let her shoulders rise and fall, letting him know that she had no idea what Fury was talking about. She didn't really, but she could make a pretty good guess.

She began to desperately hope it was something else.

Aerla had been away from the helicarrier for a gargantuan 24 hours, and she had already been pleased to see the others again, warmed at Bruce's bright smile of greeting and the dimpled nod from Steve when he had seen her ready and waiting for information.

Except that she wasn't ready and she would rather wait for much longer.

Waiting was preferable to such change that would wrench her from a schedule that she had already become used to. Waiting meant spending time with people she  _liked,_ meant that she could continue defending Earth like a  _normal_  person.

Well, as normal as you can get with superheroes by your side.

Steve resettled his shield and stood a little straighter, if that was at all possible. "Do we know who it is?"

Fury frowned in frustration. "Not yet, we don't even know if it will come, but I want you on the ground anyway."

Stark's drawl made her hide a smile, "I love it when you get cryptic."

Fury ignored him, and Aerla almost thought that his eye rested for a second too long on her. "Go, suit up, I'll let you know when we're ready."

When he left, so did Steve and Romanova, Clint hesitating to tell Aerla that he'd left her a present. A beatific smile broke out on her face but it dimmed when she saw Bruce and Stark sharing a significant look.

"Was it just me, or was that really strange?"

"Fury thrives on drama; it's like crack to him," Stark replied with distaste, but apprehension had Aerla clenching her fingers instead of giving in to the amusement.

She had crossed oceans to get here, to have the opportunity to speak with gods and find some answers, but now that she was back on the helicarrier it all felt wrong.

Aerla had spent the last week with anxiety on the backburner for once; she had spent days and nights in exhilaration and laughter. She had shown her fur to three separate people that could easily cause her downfall, but she  _trusted_ them, fully trusted them like she had so few others in the past.

Change was coming; she could feel it in the starlight-tinged air and the sense of foreboding amongst SHIELD. Drastic change for a creature that was used to merely adapting, and it terrified her.

How had seven days managed to outstrip ten centuries?

Her quiver felt too empty, especially when the unknown lurked around the corner. "I'm going to fetch my arrows… Keep a weather eye on the horizon."

Stark frowned at the needlessly old phrase. "You think something's up?"

Aerla shrugged to try and lessen the uneasiness. "Fury's shifty, nothing new but.. worth staying wary."

Bruce looked between them, reading their easy conversation and Stark's reluctant acceptance of her hunches. Then Bruce raised an eyebrow at her, his expression clearly saying  _'you told him then'._

It finally lightened her to laugh wryly. "Yeah, surprised me too. Anyway, remember that Fury's a manipulative ass."

Stark dismissed her with one shooing wave of his hand and Bruce nodded with a distracted smile. It settled her to know that they would be on their guard for whatever Fury was planning.

Aerla hated surprises.

She headed to her room and managed to smile at the bundle of arrows outside her door. They were perfect, symmetrical, well-balanced things of beauty. Her quiver felt right again, and she tested the feeling of new fletching against her fingertips. They felt unusual, different to the soft plumes she was used to, but her magic stayed quiescent.

Clint had done a marvellous job.

"Ma'am?"

Aerla cocked her head to the ceiling and practiced a pull-and-draw. "Fury have something already?"

"No, ma'am, he is being remarkably secretive in that regard, but I have something else."

"Shoot," she said idly and used the arrow point to scratch between her braid.

"I have intercepted some information from an unknown and heavily protected SHIELD mainframe."

_Phil._ Aerla flinched and the metal arrowhead nicked her skin. No, she still had time, she had another day, this couldn't be possible. "What is it?"

"Images I believe you would consider 'spying', ma'am, should I make a concerted effort to ascertain the source?"

"No!" She said hurriedly and pushed her finger against the tiny injury in her scalp. If Jarvis discovered Phil then eventually Stark would too. The fear for Phil far outweighed the fear for herself, because she was used to running.

"Should I contain the files?"

Aerla blinked in amazement and gently pressed a marvelling hand against the warm wall. "Jarvis? You are, without a doubt, one of the most brilliant things in my life."

"For what reason have I garnered your praise this time, ma'am?"

She smiled at what might have been pleasure in his tone. "I would never have thought to block that information, but you, clever you… How would I live without you?"

"Let us hope you'll never have to find out," he said, and she foolishly attempted to convey her gratitude by patting the wall. "Would you like to know what Director Fury is up to?"

Her brow marred and her quiver replenished, she headed back to the control room. "Nefariousness?"

"Indeed, especially if you consider that you are the only one not in attendance."

Aerla froze, but she had not quite understood what Jarvis had said. Instead, her nose quivered as she leaned forward like a predator on the trail and inhaled deeply. Something glittered ever so faintly, just out of reach, and she tripped forward on tip toes to catch it.

Starlight.

Fresh, fresh starlight whirled around her like a summer breeze and brought a reluctant smile to her lips. Her wolf quivered in anticipation at what that glorious smell might mean.

_There is a god aboard my ship._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the beginning of this descent into my madness, and please get in touch if you did!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and robot adoring, all belong to me.


	19. Heritage and Heretics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the world had feared the dark, she had lived on. When the world had embraced electricity, she had lived on. When the world had touched the sky and brought something back with it, someone that finally showed her that she did not belong to the stars…
> 
> She would live on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purpose of these demmed Asgardians, I've made up a word that should already exist. That word is 'deitic', as in 'deity-like', just as 'godly' means 'god-like'.
> 
> Take a guess as to who's appearing in this chapter, hm? Enjoy!

 

> "I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears.
> 
> We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me."
> 
> \- Charles Dickens,  _'Great Expectations'_

 

Aerla panicked, truly heart-rate-ridiculous-lungs-too-small panic. It took until she backed into the cold metal wall that her instincts kicked in. _Don't show fear._ The mantra was borne from when wolves had nipped at her flanks for cringing, and confirmed when humans couldn't hold her gaze.

Aerla had no idea what was around the corner, but she wouldn't face it with her tail between her legs. Instead, she fell into a persona forged by time immemorial. Fear, pain, hope, it all drifted away to be replaced by a cool confidence that cut with words and blades alike.

Not much unsettled Aerla anymore, not after a thousand years of waiting, waiting for the one thing that she could scent in the air. It flurried along her senses and made her think of  _home,_  but home was here, Earth, amongst humans.

She had been right, change was imminent and it heralded the Earth beneath her feet disappearing. But Aerla didn't want that anymore, she had chosen, she wanted to stay, she wanted to help.

She didn't want to be scared.

Finally confronted with the opportunity to find answers and she cowered like a whelp from the cruel lash of the whip. She had thought herself advanced, superior, her immortality giving her the upper hand; but after the last month she had realised that she barely knew anything, compared to gods she was just a human with a long life span.

She  _wanted_ to be just that.

Aerla had soldiered through tortured and lonely years because she had known that something else was out there, had clung to that thought when Hel's cool hand had offered to soothe her heated brow. She craved recognition and kinship, had thought that it could only come from the gods, but perhaps she had already achieved it from a place closer to  _home,_ from the planet that she considered hers and a group of brave mortals who already held a place in her heart.

Her human heart that had once craved the stars above all else.

But the stars were here, they were within reach and unrecognisable, and all Aerla knew was Earth. If she left, everything would be different. If she stayed, what would change?  _Nothing,_ the terrified voice in her head told her. She had promised herself that Earth would be safe, and whilst the Avengers lived, she would stand alongside them.

Remembering the night before, when she had listened to Stark's snores and looked over a moon-bathed New York, she reaffirmed her decision. Hardness settled over her heart, brought a coldness to her eyes, gave her steely determination against what was to come.

She knew she would need it, for temptation had become terror.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway and Aerla took one last moment to recollect, to piece herself together. What had Jarvis just said, that she was the only one not in attendance?

_Wait, what?_

Stark appeared with a concerned type of relief on his face, his hands raised in a placating gesture, as if he was about to say something that she wasn't going to like. "Kid, there you are, there's something you need to know-"

"Tony Stark?"

A rumble of a voice followed the now agitated man and with it an intensified splash of starlight. Aerla couldn't help the inhaled breath that she took, Stark saw it and it made him drop his arms for some reason and mutter wearily, "Yeah, that."

Someone came around the corner and everything in Aerla howled in distaste.

The persona reined, its claws digging so very deep into her subconscious. It kept her calm, it kept her grounded, when everything around her was going to Hell. Her pulse didn't even jump, no bloody crescents in her palms, absolutely no indication that anything was wrong.

Stark noticed anyway.

He watched as her entire being locked onto the golden god that didn't even notice her. A luxuriant, scarlet cloak flowed from deitic shoulders and the metal armour that bedecked his broad frame was strong and supple. He oozed power like a lion amongst the pride, his attitude the very thing that she had escaped from all those years ago.

Thor had stepped straight out of her nightmares.

He screamed 10th century and a learned response tried to take over, to run, to hide, to escape the potential of pain and looks of horror. Her wolf trembled in fear at the sight of him, each long-healed scar aching when her eyes caught on a mythical hammer that could destroy her if he knew what she was.

But her lifelong desire to  _belong_ tried to deny the terror. This was the future, the mortals had come to accept Asgardians, surely one of them could accept her in return, surely Thor would  _recognise_ that she wasn't a wrong statistic. Thor had not even observed her standing there, not noted the thing that had waited for him, and now reeled at his presence. His eyes met hers, blue to blue, immortal to immortal,  _but, stars, he doesn't know me._

There was no recognition on that strong-planed face; in fact, he barely spared her a glance until he realised Stark was frowning at her absolute stillness. Her muscles were locked, so intensely focused on keeping herself in check, in not showing how she  _raged._

She had chosen Earth after years of it denying her, of it detesting the very things that she possessed; but still she had thought –  _hoped_  – that someone would want her, know her,  _understand_  her. Instead, she was a mockery of a human, too many years under her belt to be one, but compared to this celestial being, she would only ever be that.

He could never know what she truly was.

When the world had feared the dark, she had lived on. When the world had embraced electricity, she had lived on. When the world had touched the sky and brought something back with it, someone that finally showed her that she did not belong to the stars…

She would live on.

Aerla inhaled a steadying breath and it brought the starlight to her nose again, and now she realised that something was faulty. There was magic in Thor's scent, but in the same way that a passive smoker smells of tobacco. It lingered on his skin but it wasn't  _his,_  he was just sun-heated metal, ozone, and  _wrong._

He had brought the power that had caused her land to scream, but he didn't wield it.

"You remind me of a female Bartonson, little one," Thor rumbled, his face lit in what seemed to her as a condescending smile.

This was a step too far, her heritage had always been hazy but she was meant to  _know_ magic, it was the one thing that she had been able to call her own, her own survivor's brand. Thor's faulty scent was the last straw; everything Aerla had thought she had known was crumbling around her ears and the persona wavered.

It flickered and it terrified her, so she grasped onto the one thing in this new, superhero-infused life that seemed inexplicably, recklessly stable.

She looked at Stark and inside she whimpered.

He jerked slightly in surprise, and then he took a step towards her so that his shoulder just barely brushed against hers, but it was enough. Whether he meant to do it or not, she clung to that foolish, tactile, sentimental sensation and from it she dragged stability over herself again.

The mortal Avengers had stopped buckling her armour; they had  _become_ her armour, against gods that might kill her for existing.

It reminded her of what she wanted to protect. The looming threat wasn't just dread and villains anymore; Thor's presence had shown her where she stood, firmly on the side of humans. And humans had been manipulated by gods for too long, and Aerla would not stand for it any longer.

For once, she understood why SHIELD was so bloodthirstily determined for humanity to succeed.

"You're still standing; I think the kid must be star struck," Stark drawled, drawing Thor's attention away from where she conquered an age-old war with herself.

Aerla breathed in again, savouring Stark's scent of electricity and engine oil that overthrew tantalising magic, but her words were still from the past, "Greetings, Odinson."

Thor brightened and Stark frowned at her, and Aerla knew that she was still slowly, ritualistically, screwing herself.

Stark saw too much.

"Greetings, I do not believe we have been introduced, although I did not mean to offend you."

Aerla laughed, and it was fake and echoing and full of spite. "Of course not, I believe it was one of the first things Stark said to me, I am grown used to it."

An old, familiar dialect had taken control of her tongue and Aerla couldn't stop it. All she could do was thank the stars that she hadn't dropped into Old Norse and engaged Thor in a language he would easily understand.

The language of a time they essentially shared. Of screams, and fire, and pain, and fear, and-

"Indeed," Thor interrupted her growing distress. "The likeness is clear now, but  _your_  weapon bears the hallmarks of a place I know well. Tell me, from where did you obtain it?"

Stark turned to look at her bow and Aerla could have cried and cursed at the same time.

_Ásgarðr_ wasn't just a different planet, it was the 10th century encapsulated in a realm. It hit her like a ton of bricks that when the gods had secluded themselves they had stagnated, bereft of humanity's swift progression and adaptation. Asgardians had become set in their ways and Thor had brought her hated past bellowing back to the forefront.

It mocked her.

"I am a collector of interesting things," she said easily, her words still tainted with age. "I fear I do not do the weapons of old justice though, this is just an imitation."

"It is a very good one."

"You are too kind, Odins- Thor."

He smiled again, one that probably inspired wars and quelled evil in the dark places of the world, and Aerla hated it. It shouted perfection and godliness and a life she never had; and for one tiny, twisted little moment, Aerla understood why Loki had been the way he was.

For who could withstand living in that faultless shadow?

Stark looked between them with a strange look on his face and said, "Er, kid, evidently you recognise the big guy; Thor, Aerla, Aerla, Thor."

Thor's brow wrinkled. "Aerla? That name has more meaning to my people than it does to yours, surely."

"It's Greek," Aerla said quickly, quashing the very notion of an idea that it had something to do with the Norse, but the  _nornir_  were truly toying with her today.

"In my tongue it means…" Thor's jaw clenched as he tried to figure something out and Aerla felt her control slipping again. "Ah, how do you say it here…  _Stiarnadóttir_. Of the stars?"

_No,_ she wanted to howl,  _you proved that wrong by just_ _ **being**_ _here and not_ _ **knowing**_ _me, you blind, ignorant god._

Aerla didn't blink, she didn't make any movements; she focused on breathing and resolutely did not look to her side. For there stood a man who was far too perceptive and held one too many of her secrets already, even as ancient, fated words hung in the air between them.

Stark murmured thoughtfully, "Of the stars?"

"Yes, or, it is something to that effect. I cannot get the meaning and the words to make sense in this language, it confuses me." Thor shook his head as if to dislodge the sensation and then smiled brightly again. "It is an honour to meet you, friend of Tony Stark."

Aerla reached for her fading control and settled for glibness. "I wouldn't call us friends."

"Oh, kid, you wound me."

"Easily, I have fancy new arrows now," she said with such an easy smile, because it was  _Stark_. She tugged one from her quiver and thanked the stars that it wasn't one of her originals; the bow was one thing, hand-carved ammo another.

She could do this, she just had to pretend that she was normal. Hel knew that she had had enough practice.

Stark surveyed the bloody point under his nose and drawled derisively, "I'm so happy for you."

 

* * *

 

Nope, Tony wasn't happy.

He had ignored Fury's command to get to ground and went to tell the kid that she was about to meet one of the Norse deities Europe was apparently so interested in. Bruce had quietly insisted upon it even as he had already been walking out of the door – neither of them wanted her out of the loop.

If there was a picture in the phrase book of 'deer in headlights', it would have been of the kid when she saw Thor. Yeah, he had been expecting a similar reaction, he was a freaking god, but he had definitely not expected what looked like absolute…

It was a storm. He had seen a storm in her eyes, of fur, and rage, and blood.

Tony wasn't an imagery person; he didn't do poetic references and compare skin to summer days, that wasn't his shtick. So why the Hell had he been so convinced that he had seen freak weather on her face as all of her infuriating glimmer just drained away to be replaced with something  _old._

Slowly, too slowly, the pieces were coming together. Her dislike of Fury, her anger at the alien capture, her helping Bruce, her passable taste in whiskey; she definitely wasn't with SHIELD.

But she knew a lot, not as much as she pretended, but enough to bypass Fury. She and Barton got on way too well, and her reaction to Thor was just weird; so who was she with? Bruce was already protecting her, and if the concerned glances he kept throwing her way were any indication, so was Cap.

Even  _Pepper,_ before she had disappeared off to blissfully ignorant Malibu,had said that he should keep an eye on Aerla – some bleeding heart thing about being normal. But what did they all know? Aerla had dug a bullet out of her leg and had big teeth;  _she_ should be looking after  _him._

The dichotomy was infuriating. Tony couldn't read her, not when she bowed her head at Fury's approach but rolled her eyes at his back, or paled at seeing Thor but flashed Tony teeth that were creepily similar to the ones belonging to the  _other_  thing; the thing that had sparked scientific interest in Bruce's face after he had realised that they both knew.

Tony didn't know what to call her little talent, Bruce had called it 'shifting' but had cut himself off when everyone had suddenly come back into their space. Aerla had been right; Fury had known exactly what was going on, so why hadn't he said so when they were all gathered in the control room? Why the little game of getting everyone to disappear first?

Bruce had noticed at the same time as he had that the kid was the only one not there. Tony had quietly checked with Jarvis but the AI had just shown Aerla in her room fiddling with her stupid arrows. What about Thor had made Fury keep Aerla out of the loop?

It wasn't like she wasn't about to be as caught up in it all like the rest of them were, it wasn't like she wasn't going to see Thor immediately after this. Even if she wasn't as nosy as he was, Thor's arrival only ever meant one thing, and it was going to require all of them to deal with it.

Tony thought the same thing that he always thought whenever he remembered a shattered window and gold-and-green: they should have just had the Hulk kill the stupid god while he had the chance.

 

* * *

 

_A rush of power, familiar, exhilarating; a sneer. "So, the heir has found me."_

Grey fortifications and the depressing banality of Midgard surrounded Loki. It had its beauties, he supposed, but they were mostly mortal obeisance or, perhaps, some of the things they could create. But none of those interesting creations could Loki see now, lounged as he was against a cold wall in his armour, listening idly to the whispered, mundane conversation at his side.

"Should we trust him?"

"How can we not?"

"He nearly blew up New York last time."

"Yeah, and we can use that to take over the city."

"What, and have him stab us in the back afterwards and piss on our corpses?"

"No, you idiot, he's not the only one with tricks, we have game too."

He perked up a little at the last thing one of the two mortals said. Did they think that they had something to challenge his authority? How interesting, perhaps this excursion wouldn't be a complete waste of time after all.

He had rushed this part of his plan after he had felt the Bifrost touch Midgard, as any mage on this godforsaken planet would have were he not the only one. Loki rather thought of it as a warning, his magic letting him know that his fool half-kin had finally taken the plunge and returned to the dismal place.

He would only have a short time before Thor and his little troupe of mortals would be out looking for him, and Loki considered giving them something to squawk over. He wondered whether Thor was secretly pleased to be reunited with the pathetic beings he held in such high esteem, whether the Allfather had wanted to let Midgard alone as he had in the past.

Really, the planet was far more trouble than it was worth.

Loki spared a glance at his illusion, cuffed and guarded over the other side of the room and out of earshot of the two arguing Midgardians.

Blind, ignorant mortals.

He would have gone straight to their leader but he didn't want to play his hand too early. Thanos had wanted his twisted form of revenge and Loki was rather good at those. He had visited various crime hotspots about New York - not deigning to venture further afield just yet - and enlisted or dismissed a few 'big names in the business' as they mistakenly called themselves.

If nothing else, Midgard was amusing in its nescience.

A fervent phone conversation had been happening as he amended his next step, and finally a decision that he had already known, was made public.

"Okay, Loki, you have a deal."

He shed his invisibility and dismissed his shackled illusion, nodding succinctly when the mortals jumped back in shock and fumbled for their guns.

"Very well," he said, and teleported away before they could finish their slow-witted reaction. He returned to his dwelling above the city and regarded it neutrally. It was no lap of luxury but neither was it a golden prison, instead it offered him amenities and a place to reside as he waited for his schemes to come together.

' _Schemes'_ , he thought with a small smile, he was starting to sound the very trickster they named him for.

Laying the groundwork took time and it was akin to lighting a very long fuse. Loki didn't want to wait; certainly not for any reason concerning Thanos or even Thor's arrival, he was just bored again. Free reign was only interesting when he was corralling errant mortals or working with the Tesseract; now he had neither.

He had considered looking for the Chitauri staff, but he couldn't feel the tell-tale pulse of blue energy that had last aided his magic. It had to be lost and so it was of no consequence, he didn't need Midgardian knowledge this time; he knew enough of their paltry workings without more mind control. Besides, the act had been tiring and left him with snatches of thoughts that weren't his own.

No, he was well equipped without it; he had what the Midgardians called 'thumbs in many pies', a phrase he had learned from Barton's secretive maze of a mind.

He smiled as the sun glinted off of the monstrously tall buildings and relished the thought of how the desolate archer would respond when he made his appearance. Did Barton still feel his deft fingers delving into his thoughts to pluck out the useful ones?

He summoned a makeshift illusion of it into his hand and rubbed an agitated thumb along the cool length, he had become too used to having a physical representation of power in his palm. The Chitauri staff was no Gungnir, but at least it had been something.

A sense of unease twisted his smile into a grimace, for he did not know for sure if the sceptre was lost and he now remembered the mortals speaking of their new tricks. If it was what he feared, he would need to appropriate it, as he could not risk it in anyone else's hands, and that would threaten the tenuous alliance that he had built.

Mortals and their petty grievances, it was always amusing that they believed themselves bigger than they actually were. Who named themselves after a creature that they had never even cut the head off of?

Then again, who named themselves 'Avengers' and didn't expect him to retaliate in kind? Loki's smile reasserted when he recognised a familiar sky ship on the horizon; a pity that he hadn't succeeded in destroying it, but that could always change.

Loki gripped the illusory staff and gave a low laugh of anticipation when three considerably smaller objects separated from the larger.

It was time to play with his puppets.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems I cannot keep Stark from a single chapter, he just keeps cropping up like a weed - a particularly snarky one that bites as you try to remove it.
> 
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the appearance of not one, but two interfering deities - please kudos/comment if you did!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and literal god-fearing, all belong to me.


	20. Proximity and Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She whispered his name and felt the power move, it focused on her like light through a magnifying glass, and it burned…
> 
> So perfectly in tune with hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know when you're so ridiculously hot that everything feels like sand, and you're not sure you even remember what water is? But then, glory, you wander past an AC unit and the cold breeze licks over your skin and it feels like heaven?
> 
> Remember that sensation. Enjoy!

 

> "She was beautifully, delicately made,  
>  So small, so unafraid,  
>  Till the bomb came.  
>  Bombs are the same,  
>  Beautifully, delicately made."
> 
> ― C.S. Lewis,  _'Poems'_

 

 It wasn't running, Aerla was fairly certain that it had been more of a trot, she wasn't even winded. Her breath had come a little easier with the more distance she put between her and Thor. The god had disappeared in a crack of thunder and ozone after Stark had said that they were needed on the ground.

It was only after Clint and Steve casting concerned looks at her in the quinjet, and her being able to breathe the smog-infused, slightly frosty air of Manhattan's floor, that she realised she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing.

Stark landed in a familiar clank of metal that managed to soothe her still unsettled nerves.

The quinjet roared off with Stark at her side, some sort of search beginning, but for what? Wasn't Thor the unexpected arrival? She had been too caught up in herself to question anything, and that was a little too indicative of a god's level of ignorance.

"Glow, why are we here-  _Oh._ " A wave of  _something_ rolled against her skin and brought goose bumps to the surface. Another, stronger this time, and her reaction with it: pleasure, starlight-tinted pleasure. Her fur pushed back and it sent icicles along her spine and a bloom on her tongue _._

Recognition slammed into her so hard that she stumbled, Stark holding out a hand to steady her. This was no second-hand smoke; this was  _fire,_ sparkling and cold in its clarity. This was what she had waited for, this was what resonated inside of her, not Thor and his false scent, with his unknowing eyes and perfect godliness.

There was something on Aerla's tongue and it tasted of  _power._

The sensation upped, the waves coming more insistently now, as if the source was closer. Aerla wanted to gorge; her wolf keened in her chest, wanting to roll in the waves and die happy, to shift into her fur, to show her stomach,  _abandon the mere mortals-_

That entirely  _wrong_ thought had her blinking and clutching a twitchy palm around Stark's forearm where it still gripped her shoulder, he was inadvertently grounding her again. She needed to tell him, to warn them, to enforce her choice.

She stood with humanity.

"Stark," she gasped around the cresting starlight, each inhalation sending her wolf crazy with glee, "Something's here."

He frowned at her phrasing. "Is this the ominous something?"

She couldn't help the exhilarated shudder when more waves pulsed against her skin. "No, no, this is far better."

Stark gave her a look that said she was acting strangely, so she gave him a sheepish grin and tried to tune out the dizzying sensations. She only managed it when Stark closed in on her flank and acted remarkably guarded, as if he was prepared for something that she wasn't.

A change in the wind had Aerla raising her nose to catch it, and the reaction overwhelmed her again. Her brain tripped into overdrive to try and process all of the information without going under, and she thought in short, snappy questions and answers. Starlight was magic; electric was Stark; ozone was Thor; frost was… Where was the frost coming from?

"Would you like to fly again, Stark? Or, perhaps, the female Barton would like to, instead?"

Aerla almost scowled at the voice that came from the air, one that she didn't quite recognise, so very different from Jarvis' calming tones. This one was husky, laughing,  _taunting._ It was only the look of intense dislike on Stark's face that made her blink out of the enthrallment.

Thor, frost, magic.

_Oh, Hell._ The  _nornir_  would surely soon tire of pulling her strings.

It was Loki.

The frost was the smell of _Jötunheimr_ _,_ the realm of frost giants, the origin of the trickster god and the one who had sought to make her planet kneel.

And,  _oh,_ the power staggered her.

Aerla felt it like a throb against her flesh, it emanated in thick waves from the being that had forced the Avengers to assemble. It made her inhale greedily and she couldn't help the frame-wracking sigh of yearning that responded.

_This is what I tracked all the way here, over oceans and through time._

_Loki._

She whispered his name and felt the power move, it focused on her like light through a magnifying glass, and it  _burned…_

So perfectly in tune with hers.

"We're on our way," Clint's voice shattered the air and she felt that avid concentration wane, felt her window closing. If she didn't grasp this moment, the kindred magic would escape her, and she couldn't let that happen, not when it was so very close.

Aerla took a step towards the ripples and ignored Stark's halting gesture, a scowl forming on his face at her disobedience. Aerla raised her nose to the air, following the scent trail of ice. Suddenly it flicked to the right, and she twisted her head to follow it.

It focused on her again.

Stark edged closer and the smell danced out of reach before dissipating, the waves stopped. Feeling bereft, anguish made her cry out as her wolf made her turn on Stark and growl, "You fool, he left."

He frowned at her outburst and it made her anger stutter, made her remember who and what she was, what she had wanted to be not half an hour ago. She took a deep breath of electric and engine oil, and it cleaned the lingering power from her memory so that she could think clearly once more.

What the Hell had just happened?

The first brush with something innately familiar and everything else had fallen away. Loki was like a leaky power core, as if he was so brimming with magic that he couldn't possibly contain it, and that was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

Never had she encountered someone who felt impossibly  _familiar_ before, that was exhilarating. The fact that the someone was Loki, the silver-tongued god who wrought disruption everywhere he went, that was terrifying.

For so long her magic had rested quiescent in her chest, easy to call upon and happy to protect the motrals whilst the human part of her wanted to visit the stars. But now the roles had reversed, Aerla wanted to remain on Earth but her wolf had become a needy creature of fur and frenzy, desperate to seek out the familiar sparkles and devour them.

Frost licked at her fingers and it was addictive.

Thor landed in a crack of asphalt and ozone, his arrival jerking her away from a path that she knew she shouldn't take, even as it lured her with promises it couldn't keep. "The American Captain said my brother was here."

"He was," Stark drawled with an exaggerated look around the empty street, but all Aerla could do was watch Thor. He didn't seem surprised that Loki had been here, in fact, he appeared as if he had expected it.

_Son of Odin, you are keeping secrets from me,_ she almost murmured, but the damning words were held at bay by his still unsettling presence. It unnerved Aerla that she hadn't felt that way around Loki, that he drew her rather than repelled.

That alluring path of ice was so very dangerous. She couldn't allow herself to think that one god was safer than the other; they were both far too strong to be anything but deadly to her.

Thor frowned under her intense gaze but replied, "He must be nearby, I will search for him."

Thor surged off with  _Mjölnir_  in hand and then she could relax again. "What's going on, Glow?"

Stark's perceptive gaze was piercing, and once again she wondered exactly how much he saw, how much he  _knew_. Clint called her name through her earpiece and Stark glanced up as the quinjet flew in overhead. "Wish I knew, kid. I think this is your ride."

There was a tug in her chest and it was that band of trust between them, the one that had cinched her decision to stay, the one that she had used to keep herself hidden from  _Æsir_ eyes.

The one that said she should be telling him everything before it was too late.

"Glow-"

"Back here, immediately," Fury's irritated voice came through all of their earpieces and the way it made her angry reminded her that they hadn't exactly been honest with her, either.

Some of them were even keeping things from each other. Phil was still alive, Clint 's rendezvous with Romanova, Jarvis' infiltration, there had to be others. Secrets within secrets, and hers would have her balancing on a bloodied knife edge.

Fury repeated his order more insistently and Aerla hopped gratefully into the lowering quinjet, exchanging a terse smile with Clint when he casually insulted her for taking so long.

Little did he know how skilled she was at putting things off.

She was long-lived, after all.

 

* * *

 

The control room was a study in tension as Thor still roamed below, ranging from Stark's stiff shoulders hidden under calm nonchalance, to Clint's twitchiness as he watched all of the doors and windows.

It was making Aerla's fur itch under her skin, and she reluctantly longed for the cool balm of power that didn't belong to her.

She tried to shake it off, to remember what was important, what she  _needed_ to do. To protect and keep the Avengers safe, that was what she wanted to do. Perhaps the  _nornir_ had intended her to be stranded here all those centuries ago, for this exact moment.

Even if the fates didn't exist, evolution did. Maybe it wasn't just mutation that Earth had cultivated against magic, what if she had been harboured as the first line of defence, the tracker, the hunter. She had just enough of the power humanity feared to know that it lingered.

And yet, it only made her hunger for more.

Steve stood in her eye-line, tall and assured, a beacon of light in the dim dubiousness of the room. Loki's return was like a kick in the gut, as if all they had sacrificed was for naught.

However, Steve could be pretty encouraging when he tried. "We beat him before and we can beat him again."

Aerla knew that confidence could be a salvation and a ruin, and when she looked at a group of humans that she had never felt so different from, she thought it might be the rise before the fall.

They were all too good, too decent to do any real damage to the god, but Loki didn't suffer from that. He would kill them all with the blink of an eye.

It just so happened that Aerla enjoyed bloodying her claws.

Clint seemed to flinch at the sound of his own voice, "Why is he even here?"

"Thor didn't say-"

Stark interrupted Steve to drawl, "Revenge, obviously."

The rest of them all appeared to agree with that.

Humanity had made themselves seem too powerful, they roared when, without cohesion, they only growled. Every breath they took was a challenge to the god of mischief; every life was a reminder that he had been beaten.

_Beaten?_  No, she couldn't think that, not when she had supped of his power and knew its strength. Loki could not have fallen so easily.

But if he hadn't yielded to humanity's might before, what had brought him back? A petty rivalry should be beneath gods that wanted to rule, mortals were mere ants in comparison. Yes, they scurried and they worked, but they could evade the boot.

And yet, Loki was no boot, he was the light beyond the magnifying glass, and how they would burn if he looked too long.

Aerla would not let them burn. Loki needed a distraction, and she was rather good at those. If she didn't belong with either force, at least she could try and stop one from slaughtering the other.

Of course, if that meant she could assuage the urge to look into the god's eyes, that was just a bonus.

The room faded back into reality and Fury's eye settled on her for far too long as Stark argued with Steve over what they should do.

"We need to go back out there, he can't think we've run," Stark said angrily, still bedecked in his suit as if he thought Loki might appear at any moment.

"It's not running," Steve tried to explain. "We're planning."

"While we're  _planning,_ he's plotting. Who knows what he's been up to for the last month!"

"Thor said he's been imprisoned, he came straight here as soon as he knew-"

"Wait," Aerla interrupted Steve, casting a look around the room. "You knew Loki was here?"

They all looked at Fury, who spread his hands and shrugged. "We didn't know if he would definitely come, but it was a safe bet."

She scowled at him for deliberately keeping it quiet, when Thor must have said as much when he arrived. Stark was the only one who had tried to tell her anything, who had kept her stable in the presence of two gods who had stolen the rug from underneath her.

"You didn't think to let me know that the Norse god of mischief was just  _wandering_ around Manhattan?"

A fine shudder went through Clint as he asked, "What if he's been on board?"

Fury's glare was intense, as if it was her fault that Clint was uneasy. "He's not been on the helicarrier."

He couldn't know that, but she could, because she would never have missed Loki's signature.

The opportunity was there, she could tell them about her abilities, could relieve Clint's mind, could do it all whilst Thor wasn't there to condemn her.

And what would they do then? They would tell the god, because Fury would immediately put her under his jurisdiction, and then Thor would kill her.

Aerla wouldn't obey the instinctual urge to flee, she already cared too much, but she would hide as best as she could.

"I'll drop the subject for now but know that I am royally pissed off."

Fury focused on her, paltry compared to Loki, but his authoritative aura pushed as he said, "SHIELD does not answer to you."

Rage sparked within, fuelled by the remnants of familiar-yet-foreign power. For too long had Aerla been pushed around by gods and humans alike, both either ignoring her or abusing her for their own ends. They were as bad as each other and she felt very much on her own right now.

It made her defensive. "Perhaps if you'd seen fit to include me on this little bit of news, I could have fucking caught him."

Bruce's brow raised as Stark's furrowed, and she tried to corral the desire to- to do  _something,_ but she had nowhere to go. Not now, not when she was as invested in this as they all were, not when Loki's arrival was a threat to them all.

Aerla might dislike Fury but she didn't want him to die at the hands of a wayward god.

Steve watched her for a moment and then asked quietly, "Where the rest of us have failed?"

"He didn't know me, had his guard down; if Sunshine here," she jerked her head at Stark, "and the rest of the rag tag crew hadn't made themselves so obvious, I might have been able to learn something."

Fury attempted an intimidating step towards her but she was high on anger and delicious starlight, and he was nothing in comparison. "Well, next time we'll be sure to leave you to the wolves."

Bruce and Stark shared a significant glance as Aerla bared her teeth in a ferocious smile and purred, "Please do."

 

* * *

 

The tension rose until Aerla had to slip off to her room to get away from Fury's judgemental eye. Her subconscious was at war again, and it made her want to scream. Around her, the world was changing, and yet all she could think about was Loki.

And what the Hell he really wanted with them.

Aerla was no deity, but she could land a few hits on a god if she wanted to, she was confident of that. But to do true harm would mean tapping into her other side, and if she accidentally showed her fur then they would  _know,_ they would see what she was.

There was a strange vibration against her foot and, for a full few seconds, she had no idea what was happening. Then the sensation made sense, a memory from what felt like a whole lifetime ago. In a way, it was.

It was a text.

An unknown number, but somehow a sense of unflappable calm was conveyed over the digital words. The thought of Phil sending a text was so bizarre that it made her smile and it helped to soothe the confusion inside of her.

Until she read it.

\-- _Fury's suddenly taken an interest, accessing some of my files, asking me questions, but he hasn't mentioned you._ \--

Jarvis had hidden the data that showed her on Phil's plane all too easily and she had thought that would be the end of it. But either Fury had been expecting an update, or she had done something to trigger an investigation.

Neither was good news.

\-- _I found a way around it_.--

She could sense his sigh of disappointment in his reply. -Find a way  _through_ it, it would be better for both of us.-

\-- _Disobeying orders again?_ \--

\-- _Are you?_ \--

She started writing something about Fitz and Simmons but his message came back too soon.

\-- _No, they haven't_.-- She laughed at his quick reaction times, at how well he knew her, but then he added, -- _Stop hiding_.--

\-- _You can talk_.--

\-- _I'm not the one who can track Loki_.--

_Fuck._ She had told him that she knew where Thor stood, and he was right. She owed it to them, to stand by them meant that she needed to share the true extent of her skills with them – but that meant telling Thor too.

And yet, she couldn't deny Phil, not after all he had done for her.

\-- _Fine, but you owe me_.--

His message came back instantly. -- _Turn around_.--

She shut everything off to glance over her shoulder, and then Fury appeared in the doorway, irritation ruling his features and Clint and Romanova at his heels. "Didn't you get the message? Get back out there."

Once again, she could postpone just a little longer, and she had never enjoyed seeing Fury's stern face more. "We have another lead?"

"Stark doesn't think he'll be able to resist coming back out."

"Like a serial killer?"

"Exactly, now move." Fury stormed off down the corridor as she aimed a sceptical glance at the closest camera, trying to convey her helplessness. Somehow, Phil was watching her, and he was waiting for her to tell them everything.

Clint clapped her on the arm but the guilt hurt more than the possible bruise, because his cheerful words had a bitter bite to them. "Come on, let's chase a god, I'll show you how it's done."

_No, you_ _won't,_ she promised silently,  _he's mine._

She would take Loki on, for Clint , for Phil, and for all of the humans who had suffered at the trickster's hands. Her wolf hungered for starlight and Aerla rubbed her hands together in anticipation. This would be like no hunt she had done before, but the prize would be infinitely better.

Recognition or revenge _,_ both would be frosty sweet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hurt me, this is just the spiral into the reveal and there may or may not be the hint of a ship coming. But hey, the world's a dangerous place, and alliances are easier to build than a relationship - this ain't no perfect life and Aerla knows that very well.
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and walk-in-freezer lusting, all belong to me.


	21. Enrapture and Capture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As if unimpressed by her silence, starlight whispered from his bladed staff against her neck. It was such a pure thread of power that Aerla quivered; it was a tiny movement, tightly controlled like a hare before a fox that doesn't want to break the lethal stillness.
> 
> The fox noticed, and a cruel smile curved his lips.

 

> "The Girl, in rock and plain  
> In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,  
> Shall feel an overseeing power  
> To kindle or restrain."
> 
> \- William Wordsworth,  _'Three Years she Grew in Sun and Shower'_

 

It was no wonder that sailors wrecked on the rocks when offered the sweet serenity of sirens.

They had been on the floor for only a few minutes when Aerla had sensed the call and it drew in the opposite direction to the tug on her heart. At the end of the call would be the powerful god who might be everything she feared, and tugging her back was the Avengers.

But it was the tug that sent her towards the call, because for all she wanted to taste the magic again, she also wanted to keep the humans safe.

She could take the burn; she was immortal.

The largest concern that had her second-guessing herself was whether Loki would know her; would he sense the magic on her skin as she could on his? If he didn't, that was fine, she could trick him into thinking that she was just a normal human. If he did and reacted as Thor would, in a storm of disgust, she would kill him.

She would try, for the shadows in Phil's eyes and the twitches on Clint's strong frame.

In the end, it hadn't even needed slipping away, because they were all searching in different directions already. Fury had them criss-crossing Manhattan and being as obvious as possible in the hopes that it would lure Loki out.

Aerla had no need for luring, she was hunting.

She wound through alleys, ducked around buildings, losing and gaining the trail as Loki's power fluctuated for some reason.

It flared suddenly, and it was only then that she thought this was rather like a wild-goose chase and that this was definitely a trap.

Loki flickered into existence mere metres from her and Aerla skidded to a stop, her breath catching at the sight of him. The Norse god of mischief stood in front of her and all she could do was stare at him, armour and all. Bereft of his trademark helmet, she could see his black hair swept back from his forehead, curling at the ends over his shoulders.

He was startlingly striking.

Aerla looked into godly green eyes that pierced her very soul and her wolf instinctively reared up to gaze back in fascination. Fear warred with awe, for here was a being that hailed from the stars and wielded a power far greater than hers, but that was as alluring as it was petrifying.

She drank him in, her adrenaline-fuelled brain trying to read absolutely everything about him. A hunter's nose, a detective's eyes, an immortal's curiosity, it picked apart his very being.

But something was wrong, he was perfect.

Even  _Æsir_  weren't perfect.

Aerla frowned and started from the beginning: fingers, clean; shirt cuffs, tidy; breathing, normal. There was not a hair out of place, not a tear in the thick luxuriant green material that clung to his lean form. It didn't make sense, how could there be no faults?

_Don't think like a human,_  a tiny voice that had slumbered for centuries told her, _he's a mage, think like a wolf._

Frost, such glorious frost tickled her senses, and something else that she couldn't place yet. It whirled around her and through her and she half thought that it was making her lightheaded.

There was too much starlight.

Aerla's eyes narrowed as she leaned forward and sniffed the god whose brow puckered at the invasion of his space. There was none of his scent there, not the one that was ingrained in his skin, it was just starlight.

It was simply magic.

Her head tilted to the side and he watched her with the calm regard of a predator as she lifted her hand to her ear piece and asked, "Can he make illusions?"

"Yes," Stark replied immediately.

That would explain it.

The Lokillusion frowned and Aerla knew what it was like to look at death, and it was wreathed in green-and-gold.

_So,_ she reasoned silently, _he can hear through them then, that or he's nearby-_  A tiny sensation flickered in the air beside her.

Aerla threw herself to the side, landing on hands and feet in a launching position. Loki appeared with a burst of power where she had been standing, the real one this time when frost and something sweet seared her nose and her wolf sat up in rapt attention.

A golden staff appeared in his hand and a line of sharp, chilly metal tilted Aerla's chin upwards to stare into cold, brilliant, emerald eyes that definitely didn't spark in recognition. Instead, they glittered with superiority as she essentially kneeled in front of him and she couldn't stop her lips from rising in a loud snarl.

This was not what she had planned. Temptation and fear were the two sides of her life's coin and they were currently flipping end over end.

Loki's empty hand flexed as if he was touching something, like a mage would hold a fireball. He frowned at whatever he discovered and Aerla felt soft caresses on hidden fur, she shifted her shoulders to alleviate the sensation and they stopped.

His head tilted to the side in a move alarmingly reminiscent of hers and ancient curiosity lit those emerald eyes. "Now, what are you?"

His husky inquisitiveness sent shivers down her spine as she looked at the arresting face of a god from another world. Aerla had thought that she would feel something if Loki didn't recognise her, rejection, joy, anything. Instead, she was held immobile by the gentle ripples of sensation that rolled off of him, by his complete and utter attention.

By the fact that he evidently sensed her magic and yet wasn't crushing her.

As if unimpressed by her silence, starlight whispered from his bladed staff against her neck. It was such a pure thread of power that Aerla quivered; it was a tiny movement, tightly controlled like a hare before a fox that doesn't want to break the lethal stillness.

The fox noticed, and a cruel smile curved his lips.

Loki's dominant aura was laced with interest, and Aerla was enthralled by it. The best cameras in the world could not capture the chilling air of the dark prince that loomed above her. For all that his power was intoxicating, he eked danger and it roused a very old instinctual fear.

_Flee._

Aerla had long been used to being the shadow in the night, the one the locals fearfully whispered about, and now she was faced with the startling realisation that she truly was just a pup against a blizzard. Suicidal fascination overcame her; Loki weaved magic like a master and she wanted to dance in it.

For the first time in her long life, she forgot herself, forgot everything, and her world focused on the being that had tried to bring her planet to heel. He seemed to preen conceitedly under her reluctantly awe-struck gaze, and then looked down his nose at her. He was the epitome of a haughty god and, to him, she was just the worthless mortal kneeling at his feet.

_Fight._

Her lupine senses heard the arc-powered engines before he did; a beam of light aiming at the god before Stark had even touched the floor. Loki disappeared when she blinked against the flash but she hadn't heard the impact. He had disappeared before any damage had been done, and she had done absolutely nothing. Stark landed next to her but she ignored him in favour of sniffing the air.

Nothing.

She slowly got to her feet, turning in a circle and methodically analysed the currents. Loki had gone, again.

"You okay, kid?"

Aerla nodded absent-mindedly as her hand brushed through the air that Loki had stood in and something tingled back. She copied the finger-waving gesture he had done and felt his lingering power brush against hers.

Loki definitely knew that she had magic, and yet he had left her unharmed.

Aerla was completely floored. Why hadn't he killed her, why hadn't she killed him, why had neither of them even  _tried?_ Instead, their meeting had felt more like two monsters that caught sight of each other over a raging river, and neither quite believed in the existence of the other.

"Kid?"

She looked at Stark, lowering her hand self-consciously and trying to ignore the pleasant icy tingles. "Yeah, fine." His frown almost seemed concerned, so she sighed enigmatically and hated lying through omission. "I think you scared him off, Glow."

His lip twitched in that hidden grin he had, but then he frowned at her again. "What did he want?"

"Honestly, I don't know. I think he tried to sneak up on me with one of his illusions."

"It's one of his favourite party tricks."

"I can imagine, it was pretty good."

"But not perfect?" Stark asked, trying to calculate her skills once more.

She finally flashed him her teeth, letting him know that she was onto him. "Is anyone?"

He gestured to himself. "Yes."

She had walked right into that one. Rolling her eyes made his lip twitch again; and the way it made her happy also made her remember what she was doing there, what she had planned to do.

Protect humanity from the god that had watched her with idle curiosity in his eyes, looked at her as if she was just another human, she wasn't the wrong statistic in his eyes, but neither was she a right one, she was just a number, a life, a stepping stone of 7 billion.

Aerla found that she truly despised that.

For the first time in millennia, she  _wanted_  to be different, to stand out, to roar her uniqueness, to stand tall and be proud of what she was.

If only what she was, wasn't worth a death sentence.

Stark tilted his head up a little. "Let me see."

Aerla lifted a confused hand to her neck and realised that a line of ice travelled from her chin towards her chest.  _The bastard marked me_ , she thought angrily.

"Loki gave you a love bite?"

"Screw you," she snapped at him, both covering concern with humour. Stark's dark eyes gleamed with amusement for a moment, but then his lip twisted in consideration.

"Did it hurt?"

_The opposite_ , she almost said _._ "Just my pride."

Stark smirked and nodded. "Yeah, he does that."

"Why is he-" Aerla cut herself off when a whisper of breeze brought frost and she lifted her nose to follow it. The line on her throat blazed and it made her want to snarl in denial.

Who did Loki think he was to mark her,  _her,_ who had roamed Earth's surface as nothing more than a bloodied whisper for a thousand years, and was now regarded as if she was less.

Her pride growled, it reared up at the thought of ignorant gods who thought that they could toy with Earth. Aerla had never felt more like an immortal human than at this moment, because she was all that stood between the two worlds, she was the  _link,_ and she would not break.

"I can find him."

Stark drew back in surprise, and his eyes narrowed as his perceptive brain worked everything through. "Is that an animal thing?"

He grimaced when she flashed him a toothy smile. "Yes, but that's my ace, Stark, we don't talk about that."

He considered that for a tense moment and then he inclined his head to the side to ask interestedly, "You going to claw him?"

""Hopefully, I won't need to."

"You should, he won't be expecting it."

"That's why it has to stay a secret," she said forcibly, for her fur would still mark her as an outsider.

Stark took a measured breath and she realised that he was ever so close to figuring out what she was, even without her telling them. Guilt and anxiety gripped her for a moment, but she couldn't think about how he would react, because a god had marked her and she was going to repay him for it.

His usual humoured glint wasn't there as he watched her carefully, but then he held out a hand. "Where to, kid?"

She stepped towards him with a relieved sigh that was caught in her throat when he immediately took off. Her hands scrabbled around his shoulders and for a moment she forgot about Loki as she delighted in flying.

Then they flew through starlight.

"Wait," she urged, shaking her head out of the delight. "Let me check."

She leaned away from him to sniff the air and he resettled her against his side. "Careful, kid, it's a bit of a drop."

"You won't let me fall, Glow," she replied with an absent-minded smile as frost tickled her nose. "Head left, and can you take this for me?"

She tucked her phone inside his faceplate – much to his antipathy – but he let her dictate the directions for a few minutes until they arrived at cross-roads which befuddled her. "I can't tell where he went. He's been here a lot."

"How do you know?"

"It's concentrated here."

"What," Stark asked a little disgustedly, "His  _smell?"_

"Don't mock, electric-and-engine-oil."

He stared at her in confused amazement. "Is that me? That's so weird, you're weird." He lasted a whole three seconds before he asked, "What's Loki?"

She threw him a smug glance, because now the tables were turned and  _he_  was interested in the things that  _she_  could do. "Frost and… something else."

"You can't tell?"

"No, he disappears before I can place it."

Stark was quiet for a moment as she turned on the spot, but then said, "So you know he's not been around."

She stilled for a moment and delighted in being able to say honestly, "I would have said something if he had."

"Even though SHIELD don't know about you?"

She shouldn't have been surprised at how much he had worked out, but it still made her breathe a little uneasily. "Yes," she promised quietly, to him as well as herself.

A pulse against her side had her freezing and she immediately stood in front of Stark, making herself a barrier to what she knew was coming.

"Kid-"

Loki's mocking voice came from the air. "Are you protecting him, little mortal?"

Stark swore and Aerla couldn't help the outraged baring of teeth at that term. It taunted alongside the delicious magic and made her exhale awkwardly, but Stark's shoulder was pressed against hers and from it she drew his reckless stability.

It made her feel human and cocky.

With ice licking at her fingertips and electrified iron at her side, Aerla lowered her voice and goaded, "Are you  _hiding_ , Loki?"

The god appeared with a derisive sneer and Stark's laugh was spiteful. "Too easy, Reindeer Games. Where's your horns?"

The nickname startled her into a chuckle, and then she could almost ignore the alluring draw of Loki's power.

Almost.

"Deception  _is_  his forte," she murmured and felt Stark grin, bringing her closer to normality.

Loki simply stared at them, empty handed but still somehow authoritative. He wasn't unnerving her, he was interesting her, and that made her want to snap at him. The god was dangerous  _because_ he wasn't warning her away, and so she assimilated Stark's glib calm.

Aerla nonchalantly leaned against Stark and said idly, "What do you think he wants?"

Stark settled into the game and pretended to think. "An apology wouldn't go amiss."

Loki's calm façade flickered and irritation flashed across his face – it only spurred them both on.

"How much did your window set you back, in the end?"

"It's not the window that bothered me, it's my floor, had to buff out the Hulk marks."

Rage whipped against her senses and made her inhale sharply, power built in intensity and in one quick move she shoved Stark to the side. He fell with a squawk of noise but he was out of the line of fire, and that was all that concerned her at the moment.

Light sparked in Loki's hand and then a staff of gold with a bladed edge was pointed directly at her. "You taunt things you cannot hope to comprehend."

Anticipation had Aerla narrowing her eyes as she braced her feet and grinned. "Try me, Trickster."

Aerla heard Stark's voice a scant second before a shadow passed overhead, he said, "Wait."

The quinjet appeared in a clatter of readying barrels. Loki's smirk was deprecating and full of scorn, as if she had called in back up because she was scared.

"No," she called and held out a hand to the quinjet, but then the god disappeared and she yelled in anger. She threw herself to where he had stood, but only his lingering power enveloped her, like a taunting farewell.

Stark got to his feet and watched her carefully, his eyebrow quirked upwards as she strode towards him. She flared her hands in frustration and demanded, "Why did you call them?"

"I didn't."

Stark's voice was damning as he frowned in thought. Aerla faltered and cast a sceptical glance up at the hovering quinjet. "They were watching us?"

"Someone was."

Aerla shuttered her emotions and silently cursed humanity for progressing with technology so much that even she was having trouble hiding.

She stared daggers at the quinjet and Stark grunted in annoyed agreement, "Can't you just-"

"No."

Stark blinked at her interruption, because she would not find Loki again. "Because of-"

"No."

Stark frowned, because it was not due to SHIELD knowing her secret. "Then why?"

She rubbed a finger over her earpiece and said inaudibly, "He won't come out again; he knows we're waiting, watching. He thinks we tried to  _trick_ him, Glow, he'll have fucked off to his hideout and be laughing himself silly."

Jarvis had boosted her voice so that it reached Stark, and he scowled in reluctant agreement. "What are we gonna do 'til he shows up?"

Aerla sighed and rubbed her hand across the back of her neck to relieve the sudden tension along her shoulders. The quinjet was still hovering above and it was a looming premonition of how SHIELD were about to land on her like a ton of bricks.

She had faith that Stark would keep quiet about her skills, if only because he liked knowing things that Fury didn't – even though she fervently hoped it was because he trusted her. That little rope of trust was thickening further and she hoped it would be enough for when all her secrets were laid bare, or when he figured it out himself.

Aerla blinked in the suspicious quiet, and then five things happened at once.

Jarvis' warning sounded. Stark's faceplate clicked down. Clint yelled her name. Pain flared at the base of her spine.

Aerla inhaled, and the air was completely free of fresh frost.

She had been shot, shot with bullets from a gun, and without her fur as a barrier, memories creeped at the corner of her mind. It had been decades since her human skin had been pierced by modern technology, and it shocked her into still silence.

"HYDRA," Stark shouted, and pushed past to stand between her and whatever it was that was sending points of hot metal across her back. His suit made little pinging noises and she only just heard his muttered, "Sorry, kid."

Stark pulled her back against his front and she had to bite back the yelp of pain as he pushed them both off of the ground. Wind against her face brought everything into clarity. "Put me down, Glow!"

Above them, the quinjet's door opened and she writhed in Stark's arms as they approached, the movements irritating the hot wounds along her spine. "Don't you dare, Stark."

Clint's face appeared over his chair and he jerked his head to entice her inside. Stark nudged her forward until her toes touched metal and he started to let her go. "Nice try," she snarled, and twisted to lock her arms and legs around him and force him away from the agents' hearing.

"Get in the jet, kid."

"No."

His faceplate opened and she reeled at what she saw there. It almost looked like furious worry. "Your spine, can you dig them out of there too?"

She growled low into his frown, "Yes, alright? Yes, I can."

"If you die," he muttered angrily, "I swear…"

"I love you, too," she started sweetly. "Now, put me the fuck down!"

He dropped like a stone and took the impact so that she could brace for the inevitable pain of moving. Her first step onto tarmac made her flinch, but then she shoved Stark to the side as a bullet whizzed past.

"I'm wearing armour, remember?" Stark called out over the gunfire as they hunkered behind a low wall.

"Can  _you_ dig them out?"

He snorted a laugh. "Don't make nice with me, kid, just focus on not getting shot."

"Same to you, Pepper would never forgive us," she said, and then vaulted over the wall and sprinted towards the many shooters that were hidden amongst a cavalcade of empty cars.

Stark appeared at her side, but he matched her reckless grin when she caught his eye. They ran headlong into danger, and it sent a thrill of excitement alongside the wounds in her vertebra.

Thor landed amidst the HYDRA agents and Aerla skidded to a halt, Stark doubling back to check on her. "I'm fine," she said and tried to repress the learned hatred at the sight of the blonde god. "Go. Go!"

Stark's expression was torn, but she pushed him on the shoulder and then he went to back up Thor. Aerla took a shuddering breath and then she decked a man who tried to sneak around to Stark's back.

The motion steadied her. She knew how to fight, she knew how to defend, and pain was only a grounding concept to Aerla.

The quinjet flew overhead and then Steve landed in a crouch next to her. Aerla swore in surprise, "Does everyone fall out of the fucking sky, here?"

Steve laughed and chided, "Language," and promptly disappeared into the throng of vans and agents.

_Bloody, self-sacrificing humans,_ she thought with a wry smile, and then threw herself into the fray.

Time passed in a blur of black body-suits and ghastly shades of lime and yellow. When she couldn't find a vantage point to shoot from, her fingers brushed the heel of her boot to pluck a blade, but then Thor lumbered past and she reflexively stumbled backwards.

Thor hesitated and held out a hand as if to steady her. "Are you hurt?"

"No, no," she burbled and dodged his questing fingers. His brow clouded and she swallowed that little tendril of fear at his presence.  _Mjölnir_  was dormant at his side, but she was still so painfully aware of it, of how it eked  _justice._

Aerla's ear piece vibrated and Steve sounded, "Tony, stop."

Thor faded away and Aerla turned on the spot, some part of her knowing that Jarvis had clicked her into a conversation she wasn't supposed to hear.

"I can take it, Cap."

"Don't," Steve sounded suddenly panicked. "We don't know what it is."

"We will soon."

"Tony-!"

Aerla saw the conversation happen, she saw Steve's back a few metres from her, and far beyond him, was Stark standing up against what could only be described as a robot. It looked almost exactly like the one she had seen on Stark's counters all those days ago.

It had a gun aimed at his face, and then it produced ten more.

Steve began to run, but he was too slow, he was only human and that was too slow.

The scent of starlight and flowers trembled on the breeze.

Aerla began to run, but she was too slow, she was only human and that was too slow, so she threw her earpiece forwards and shifted to grab it in her jaws. Wolf paws thudded onto the warm, bloody tarmac, and she raced past Thor and Steve without thinking about the stunned looks on their faces, all she thought of was Stark's safety.

Clicks and whirrs of readying barrels and Aerla threw her shoulder into Stark's. He fell to the side and she shifted back to hook her human arm under his and force them both into a run. Heat scorched at their backs and the earth shook from where definitely deadly missiles hadn't met their mark.

"Somebody shoot it," she yelled, forcing her earpiece back in and trusting Jarvis to spread the word.

Far too long later, they stopped, and then the quinjet soared into place behind them and released a series of shots. Stark was muttering under his breath and then aimed something over his shoulder that had her ears ringing. Aerla turned, grabbed for her bow and notched, ready to shoot anything that rose from the cloud of dust.

Heavy-breaths were their stopwatch as they waited, but only metallic rubble remained; metallic rubble and the memory of a flash of fur.

Aerla's earpiece was static, such deafening static where everyone else refused to talk. The quinjet lowered to pick up Steve, hidden behind a row of empty vehicles, and then it flew overhead.

It didn't stop for her. It practically screamed of her betrayal and it hurt far more than it should, but it wasn't over yet.

For she still had more to tell them.

Aerla looked over at Stark who gave her a grateful nod of his head before holding out a hand in an offer of flight. When she took it, she did so hoping that he wouldn't soon regret it, that her lies wouldn't strangle the burgeoning trust between them all.

She cared too much.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter (could you tell I was watching Sherlock as I wrote these?), please get in contact if you did (especially if it's to fondly tell me to hurry up because you want to know what happens next), and please leave me a comment!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and furry takedowns, all belong to me.


	22. Revere and Reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerla checked her mental sanity as she headed for the one place her instincts were screaming at her not to go to.
> 
> Wonderful, they were all waiting for her in the control room, like the shittiest surprise party that had ever existed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take it, take it and please enjoy it - if there are any reactions that you didn't expect/don't like, rest assured that they will be explained and rationalised. This chapter and the next were extremely difficult to pin down so please let me know what you think, whether it's praise or conjecture.

 

> Surely the mind of man is closely bound  
>  In some black spell; seeing that each one tears  
>  Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,  
>  And converse high of those with glory crown'd
> 
> \- John Keats,  _'Sonnet. Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition'_

 

Tony thought nothing of flying the kid back up to the helicarrier when the quinjet flew off without her – and he thought that a bit of a dick move on their behalf, actually.

Okay, so maybe standing up to the mysterious robot that really shouldn't have been in Manhattan wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, but what the Hell was it even  _doing_ here? He'd checked Jarvis' scans that morning and that whole fiasco should have still been on the West coast. He had told the kid as much nearly a week ago, it  _wasn't_ their fight.

Was everything always up to him?

The kid rapped her knuckles on his helmet when he absent-mindedly weaved a bit too close to a skyscraper and he remembered that maybe she had contributed a little bit. Just a bit, mind, it was mostly his victory.

Jarvis seemed to be taking great delight in throwing him fatal percentages had Aerla not collided with his shoulder scant seconds before he'd almost ended up a hot, shrapnel mess.

Speaking of that,  _ouch_ , she packed a serious punch for someone half of Thor's size.

When they landed in the empty hangar, he drew Aerla's phone from his suit and regarded it for a calculating moment before throwing it to her in – what he saw as – gratitude for her quick reactions.

The kid just watched him. What did she want, a hug? Screw that, Tony didn't do hugs. No matter how weirdly tactile she and his damned turncoat robots were turning out to be.

"Hey," he said casually to try and take that wary look from her face in his own way. "If I took my suit off, d'you think you could give me a warning if we're needed?"

Aerla hesitated for a moment and then she narrowed her eyes. "Are you still taking the piss out of my hunches?"

"I'm just sayin'," he replied as Jarvis began to take his suit apart. "You could try and be useful for once, act like an alarm."

He swore when Jarvis seemed to accidentally smack his helmet into his face, and it made Aerla smile. He scowled at her but then glanced around the hangar, wondering how best to phrase this without putting that whipped-dog expression on her face again. "I'm gonna go see Bruce, you good?"

She blinked at him, looking like the kid he'd named her, but then she hardened and looked like the  _other_ thing, the one he wanted to talk to Bruce about.

"Yeah, sure," she said as if she didn't care. "I'll be over in five."

Tony nodded and walked, running his hand through his hair as he did so. This was turning into something far beyond his pay grade – and he wasn't even getting paid for any of this shit.

Bruce was pacing nervously in the control room when he arrived, looking the picture of a concerned parent. "Is she okay?"

"I'm fine, thanks for asking." Bruce didn't even give him the benefit of a reaction so Tony sighed, "Yeah, of course she's okay. She's got that shifting-thing going on, doesn't she?"

Bruce frowned at him. "Aerla's not like me and you know it."

"Of course I know it, I knew it before you did." Tony held up a hand when Bruce tried to deny that obviously factual statement. "There's something else, though."

Bruce took a measured breath but then raised his eyebrows patiently. "Go on then, you've evidently been dying to tell me about it."

Tony threw him a grin, Bruce was getting to know him too well. He strolled over to his counter and brought up the video that was giving him such trouble. It was the moment that Aerla had pushed him to the side and somehow  _knew_ Loki was there. He flicked it over to Bruce and said quietly, "He didn't attack her."

Bruce crossed his arms and watched the soundless file. "She did say that he wouldn't know her, maybe he was interested in her."

"I think it goes both ways." Bruce stiffened at that almost-damning opinion so he added, "She  _looked_ like Loki."

"You mean Thor?"

Tony let his shrug answer that question, because it wasn't the physical attributes that bothered him.

Images flurried to the front of his brain, the laughing kid who taunted him but befriended his AI, the way she slipped from human into  _something else_  in the space of a breath to push him out of the way of possible death.

But Tony hadn't seen a human standing up against Loki, he had almost seen the something else, and it had looked like it was captivated.

"You know when cats see things that no one else can? It was like that."

Bruce relaxed and almost smiled. "Well, she's not a cat, but-"

"No, I don't mean like that," Tony interrupted, heaving another sigh as he realised that Bruce really needed to open his eyes more.

Bruce's brow furrowed in thought as he hedged, "I thought maybe she was older than she seemed."

"I think she's older than that," he replied gravely, and watched Bruce's eyes widen. "I think she's as old as  _they_  are."

Bruce's mouth opened in almost-aggravated surprise. "Wait, you don't think she's a mutant?"

"The signs are all there, Bruce; the regen', weird strength, her reaction to Thor, and to Loki." Tony flared his hands to say, "She  _smiled_ at him, and it was vicious as fu-"

Fury stormed in and Tony turned his gesture into a subtle swipe that cleared all of the screens in the room. It didn't hurt to be careful, even if the guy only had one eye.

Tony hadn't even had a chance to have a coffee yet, but Fury was already up in his grill and growling, "Why did you go to her?"

Tony shrugged, knowing he could only mean when the kid had been at Loki's feet. "Loki was there."

Fury seethed, "She wanted her little one-on-one, you should have left her."

"He had her by the throat," he replied, unable to hide the disgust in his voice. That sickening white line had still not faded, nor the memory of her anger when she had realised that the scratch was there.

Talk about marking your freaking territory, and wasn't  _that_ thought weird.

"Then maybe next time she'd know not to keep secrets and try to take Loki on," Fury said harshly before turning away.

What was the guy's problem? If Tony didn't know better, he'd think that Fury was considering sacrificing one of them just to get some more intel on Loki… Actually, he wouldn't put it past him, cold-hearted bastard that he was.

Barton and Natasha were on Cap's arriving heels. The pair had their agents-who-feel-no-emotion faces on, but Cap was so tense that he looked like he might crack at any moment. Thor, on the other hand, strolled in as if he had no idea how fucking tense this room was about to get.

Tony needed coffee, and he needed it now.

 

* * *

 

Five minutes; Stark had left her alone, she had waited five minutes, and now it was time. Aerla checked her mental sanity as she headed for the one place her instincts were screaming at her not to go to.

Wonderful, they were all waiting for her in the control room, like the shittiest surprise party that had ever existed.

Fury was definitely wearing more guns than usual, and whilst Clint and Romanova were quiescent by his side, she knew that they would both attempt to gut her without a moment's notice if he needed them too.

Bruce was by his counter, his attitude relaxed and encouraging. Stark was fiddling in the corner with the coffee machine, and Steve was pacing, his shoulders stiff and depressing. Thor was in the corner, not having a hand in mortal arguments.

Aerla wondered with morose curiosity how long it would take Thor to truly realise what she was, and whether  _any_ of them would stand with her then.

They let her get two steps into the room before Fury held up some handcuffs for someone to take. The humiliation threatened to burn, but Steve and Clint both hesitated and her heart soared a little, but then Romanova stepped forward and snatched the cuffs from Fury's hands.

"This is unnecessary," Bruce remarked, frowning at Aerla when she slowly held her wrists together and stepped forward.

There was no point in causing a fuss now; she may as well let them do what they wanted if it meant that they would just  _listen_. The cold steel was clinched far too tightly around her skin but Aerla refused to give anyone the satisfaction of her wince, especially the assassin whose eyes threatened her so.

Fury narrowed in on Bruce's plaintive remark and asked in angry disbelief, "You knew about this?"

Bruce looked at her briefly and then shrugged, as if saying  _'you knew this would happen, it doesn't change anything'_. "Yeah, she helped me out."

Aerla's smile was small, but it felt bright.

Calculation flickered on Fury's face as he put two and two together to realise that she had empathised with Bruce's creature. His jaw clenched and then Stark must have felt like he needed to make the situation a thousand times worse because he said nonchalantly, "I guessed."

"What do you mean, you  _guessed_?" Fury practically growled. "Either you knew, or you didn't."

Aerla did wince when she thought about what Stark was going to say next, and he did it with a shrug. "I saw a wolf jump in front of a bullet for Pepper, later I saw her dig it out of her leg; made sense."

Clint's eyes flicked to hers when he realised that it had happened when she was with Stark, after he had trusted her to take his place. She tried to convey an apology and all of the guilt that had settled on her shoulders, but he looked away to Steve who broke rank to approach her.

Romanova tensed as if concerned Aerla was about to attack him, and Aerla sighed as Stark rolled his eyes. Aerla had no desire to hurt any of them, if she had wanted to harm them they would already be bloodied. Steve's face was a battle of confusion and bitter acceptance when he stood before her.

"This is what you meant about secrets, isn't it?"

Aerla looked into his concerned, old eyes and smiled sadly at the betrayal she saw there. "Yes, and all to defend Earth and keep myself safe."

He nodded slowly at the remembered words and glanced at her cuffs. When he looked probingly at her again, it was almost as if he was asking her whether she wanted them off, so she shrugged in response. Restraints were useless against a creature that could shift forms, for now they were just a mild irritation that she could deal with.

She was more utterly shocked that Steve at least thought that she didn't need to be restrained.

Steve looked over his shoulder at Fury. "I think that means I technically knew too."

Aerla frowned at the back of Steve's head, – completely ignoring what definitely looked like a smirk on Stark's face - it irked her that the soldier was once again throwing himself on the fire for her. "No, you didn't, I could have been referring to any number of things."

Fury cast about the room, his teeth practically scraping together in anger. "Who the Hell else knew?"

They began to argue and bicker around her, trying to deduce who knew what and when. But then there was a small buzzing against Aerla's foot and she knew it to be the one person who knew nearly everything – and he was dead to most of the people in this room.

The cuffs didn't keep her from reaching into her boot and flicking the screen on to read the text.

-Tell them.-

_Damn it._ That Phil-shaped area of her armour was influencing too much, even as she knew that he was right. But the fear was so ingrained; it reverberated along every healed scar and each memory of lonely nights.

She could share the wolf, she could share that one part of her, but Thor who watched quietly from the corner… Thor would  _know_.

She gave the closest camera her most withering glance, but it must have betrayed how terrified she was feeling, because Phil immediately sent another text.

-It will be okay.-

_Damn him._ Trust could be so very bittersweet. Aerla took a deep breath and announced to no one in particular, "I'm not a mutant."

The room stilled.

Satisfaction blared from the far too perceptive Stark and Bruce sent him an alarmed look that said  _'you were right'_  before he turned to her and asked quietly, "How do you know, you said you were born with the ability to shift?"

Fury's glare could have burned through metal at the realisation that others knew things that he didn't.

"Slight over-exaggeration." Aerla heaved a sigh and wondered how it had ever come to this, telling her life story to a group of people that might kill her. "I was born with it, but it didn't realise itself until I encountered magic."

A change went through Thor that no one else noticed, because only Aerla had been looking for it. The  _Æsir_  froze and his palm fell onto  _Mjölnir_ almost absent-mindedly as he grasped exactly what she was.

Thor's eyes held a judgement that was as immortal as they both were, and it whispered  _'monster'._

She didn't take her eyes away from the biggest threat, even as Stark asked interestedly, "Where did you find it, the  _magic_?"

Aerla ignored the slight taunt. "There is a circle of heather in the south of England where two armies once stood. Who they were and what they did, I don't fully know, but what they left behind was testament to their power."

"You?" Bruce asked, and she risked a bitter smile despite still staring into damning blue eyes.

"Well, yes, but I was referring to the unending source of magic that still lingers there. Odin ended the battle, but he didn't clean up very well."

Thor took a step towards her and she finally looked away, every instinct awakening with the screaming urge to  _run,_ run from the past that had followed her to the present, run from the god that could call her  _wrong_ and every single person in this room would agree with him.

Because it was Thor, and he was never wrong.

The golden god brushed past Steve to stand in front of her. His fingers tilted her chin upwards and obliviously rested on Loki's mark. When Aerla looked at him, it was with a thousand years' worth of pain and claws and rejection, her keening want to slash at his perfect godliness, and inside she  _howled_.

Thor snatched his hand back and whispered, " _Seiðr._ "

Aerla snapped her teeth at him in automatic defence and he stumbled backwards, putting distance between them as Steve stared in surprised horror at her. She settled back into place to calm them all down, and yet couldn't help but snarl at Thor, "Do not label me as such, Odinson, for you have no idea what I am nor what I possess."

Her natural dialect leaked through at hearing her first language uttered, and she ground her jaw at the peculiar feel of it in her mouth. The words were all still there, hidden in the dark recesses of her mind, ready to proclaim her shame when it was called upon. Just like all those years ago when she had almost forgotten how to speak.

"What did he say?" Bruce asked, coming forward to stand at her side.

His presence helped, his calm energy soothed the raging storm that wanted to fight and flee, fear and be feared. He helped her see reason. It was all coming out now, she would only be doing herself more harm if she hid anything else. This was her chance to show them where she stood, on their side.

Not with the stars that she thought she had known.

"He termed me sorcery," she answered bitterly, "A witch that practiced shamanic arts."

Thor watched in shock as she so easily translated and then sounded entirely too derisive when he said, "But you are merely Midgardian?"

"Keep a civil tongue,  _Æsir_ , or I will cut it from your throat." Aerla bit at the air, unable to temper her reactions when confronted with his response. Her death might lay a mere few metres away but she would go down fighting if she had to.

But then Stark circled his counter to access his computer and it brought him closer to her side. He placed her mug by her hip. Relief was a shudder that rocked her, until Stark asked with the idle tones of a man that saw too much, "How old are you?"

"I've been here ever since  _his_  kind came here the first time," she replied honestly, deliberately distancing herself from the god that watched her as if she would attack him.

Thor shook his head in denial. "There have been no visits to Midgard in millennia."

"Just over one, to be precise."

All of their reactions were amazing in their differences. Thor paled, Steve looked at her anew, and Bruce was thoughtful. The SHIELD members were stoic, and the neutral, closed expression on Clint's face made her chest hurt.

Stark, however, apparently wanted to be thorough, as he clarified, "So, you're saying you're a thousand years old?"

"I wear it well, don't I? Alcohol, that's the secret."

Stark snorted a laugh and Aerla could swear that a glint of amusement entered Clint's eyes. The archer certainly relaxed, his stance loosening as he cast a speculative glance at his superiors who were still staring daggers at her.

It was enough. Stark, Bruce, Steve, Clint; their reactions made something that had wound so incredibly tight begin to relax. Aerla had no idea what she was, but she knew what she could offer: protection, help, claws, and the ability to track an errant god down to the ground.

She had nothing else, no ridiculous strength, no new information, no links to the planet that she had once longed to visit. Thor's reaction had given her the answer that she had hoped would not be true and yet had always expected.

She didn't belong with the  _Æsir_.

She had always thought that heritage was important, but perhaps that was just her own hang-ups from the past. Times had changed and eventually, she had too. What was the point in all of the searching if she wasn't welcomed? Why leave the only planet she had ever known, for the unfriendly stars?

If Earth would have her, she would stay.

It hit her, truly hit her – some, at least, of the humans were finally accepting of her, and the once-worshipped  _Æsir_  were not. It seemed that she did belong to the planet, after all.

"Why didn't you want us to know?" Steve asked quietly, reminding her briefly of how he viewed the sharing of information.

_I didn't hurt any innocents,_ she wanted to tell him,  _I kept Earth safe._

" _His_  reaction," she said bitterly and jerked her head at Thor, "Was tame compared to what I used to receive. If our heritage is in any way similar, he would kill me for what I am."

Thor stepped back defensively when most of the mortals stared in shock at him. "She's  _öfugr,_ they are not allowed to exist."

Even Romanova frowned at that and Aerla was only too happy to elucidate. She was painfully used to Thor's ancient viewpoint. "His people consider me  _backwards_ , an animal first; I should be culled."

As the humans all winced at that barbaric term, Bruce frowned attentively. "But you were born human, weren't you?"

"Yes, I think so, but still, the animal lay latent inside of me – look, don't ask me to explain something I've never understood."

As she had expected, Fury turned to Thor and offered her to him like a lamb to the slaughter. "She's technically your jurisdiction, what do you think?"

Thor shook his head again, but the judgement was going from his eyes and in its place was something strangely considering. "She might be long-lived, but she isn't Asgardian."

Aerla restrained the hiss that wanted to sound, at the fact that he had measured her and found her wanting. Instead, she ignored the god and shrugged at Fury. "You collected special people with special powers, I'm not a mutant, I think I qualify."

Fury grimaced at how she wasn't wrong. "We don't  _use_ magic on Earth; it didn't work out well for us last time."

"Yes," she conceded. "But now you've got some of your own. I'm nowhere near as powerful as Loki, but I have my tricks."

Thor's strange consideration, amazingly, turned to concern. "Your magic might be celestial in nature but Loki knows the laws as well as I, and he would not be lenient because you are human. He would destroy you."

_Lenient,_ Thor was being  _lenient_ by letting her live: ridiculous. But Aerla remembered green eyes that had glittered in curiosity and not in detestation,  _not like Thor's blue ones had_. "And yet he did not."

"He does not know of your true power." Thor paused for a moment and then stepped closer, his concern abated with a god's immortal curiosity. "Unless, perhaps, you are a norn _?_ "

Self-derisive laughter spilled from her throat and she drawled, "Yes, I while away on Earth when I could be drinking from  _Urðarbrunnr._  I am  _merely_ human, am I not?"

Thor couldn't restrain his grimace at her knowledge, but said, "You evidently know the tales, the norns take the forms of many, not just Asgardians."

Aerla was beginning to tire; Thor was asking the pitifully hopeful questions that she had asked of herself many centuries ago. She was not a god, not a celestial, not a Norse seer. None of the answers were suitable save one: she was human with the magic of the Nine Realms. Magic that Thor definitely did not possess, and yet Loki overflowed with.

Bruce was watching them wonderingly but Fury had also apparently had enough of things he didn't understand, because he leaned forward on  _her_ counter and watched her with one displeased eye.

"You expect us to keep you on board, after all this?"

Aerla bristled and took strength from the surprised looks sent Fury's way. "I've been protecting this planet for centuries, now I can do it to the best of my abilities."

Romanova spoke for the first time and her voice was low and damning, "How do we know you're not with HYDRA?"

Even Clint frowned at her for that question and it meant that Aerla could keep most of the outrage from her voice as she replied, "I fought HYDRA the first time around, with  _him_."

She jerked her head at Steve and he stiffened, as if he had suddenly realised that she had  _been_ there, in his past. His face had questions on it, ones that she promised she would answer later, but for now she had to ensure that she would be able to stick around long enough to do so.

Fury still surveyed her emotionlessly. "How can we trust you?"

"I could have run countless times, instead, I revealed myself to help, I shared knowledge that you didn't have, that even  _Thor_ doesn't have." Because Thor couldn't put a hand or a nose to the air and know what had passed through it.

There was one last card that she had to play, because Phil wanted her to start being honest, and she couldn't deny him. He had offered his help from the beginning and now she was going to use it, but Aerla wouldn't deprive Fury of his guilt and tell the Avengers that their favourite agent still lived.

Aerla locked eyes with Fury and placed a burning coal in his hands. "I did not lie to make them fight for me, can you say the same?"

She saw the moment he finally made the connection between her and his errant agent, all of the missing data that Phil should have been providing. Realisation made Fury school his features, but the promise of pain was written in his one good eye. It would be long and torturous and it didn't scare Aerla in the slightest.

"Fine, stay," he snapped, trying to turn it into an order rather than forced acceptance when the mortals all looked to their director in surprise.

_Call me an Avenger,_ Aerla thought, and couldn't stop her mouth from curving into a dark, satisfied smile.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naturally, the entirety of the reactions will span the next few chapters. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed the beginning, please let me know in a comment if you did! 
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and damned dialectal, all belong to me.


	23. Innate and Inmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I can't help it, I look at him and-" Aerla glanced bitterly at the frowning god. "And I remember."
> 
> "Remember what?"
> 
> "Fear," she bit out. "And pain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you start sharing secrets, everything else starts to fall into place - you tap one domino and, suddenly, you're awash in spots and ominous clicks. Sometimes all it takes is one little tap, one friendly smile, and you've laid your soul bare to a man who listens too well.

 

> "You didn't kill him. He would have killed you, but you didn't kill him."  
> "So? He was stupid. If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn't have time to sleep."
> 
> ― Tamora Pierce,  _'In the Hand of the Goddess'_

 

Just because Fury and the SHIELD agents had removed her handcuffs and left in a storm of glares didn't mean that they weren't watching her like hawks, and the simile was painful, because Clint had left without a backwards glance.

She hoped that it was just shock and not hatred that had caused the archer's reaction.

Aerla thought that she could feel Fury's eye burning a hole in her head even through the cameras, as if she were a prisoner once more. She almost submitted to the urge to text Phil, to look for comfort now that she had done as he had asked.

She felt strangely alone amidst so many people.

Instead, Aerla had to deal with Thor's incessant, probing questions from across the room, and it was beginning to make her wish that he would try to kill her with  _Mjölnir_ rather than boredom.

It didn't help that the rest of them were listening to every word.

"You do not know who birthed you?"

"No, Odinson," she replied absent-mindedly as she rubbed her sore wrists, tiredness tugging on her wearying senses. "I was an orphan, initially raised by two very mortal humans."

Thor didn't understand what she had said, that her adoptive parents had aged incredibly swiftly, but the mortals in the room understood and winced.

Aerla hoped that she never became as ignorant and blind as the gods.

Bruce regarded her over his steepled fingers, he had been absorbing every single bit of information and, for some reason, Aerla didn't mind answering  _his_  questions. "What happened the first time you shifted?"

"Do you want the epic tale or the short version?"

"Epic," he replied with a smile, as Stark mockingly called out the other.

"A compromise then, very well." Aerla hopped onto her counter and sighed, trying to decide where to begin in the warped tapestry that was her life.

"My adoptive parents were kind, at first. They wanted children and then they found me, an abandoned squalling babe. They called me a gift, 'a gift from Óðinn himself' they said, but how wrong they were."

Thor shifted awkwardly and although Aerla couldn't help the lingering dislike that howled in her chest, she found that she couldn't blame him for his father's mistakes.

Steve was still hovering in between them, though, as if concerned that they would suddenly lunge for each other.

"Years later, I obeyed a call, one of those things that show up in books," Aerla said with a little self-derision, uncomfortably aware of how similar the urge was to Loki's siren call of power. "When I found the circle of broken heather, something soared in my blood, my bones shifted and I wore my fur."

Steve's tense form eased a little in sympathy and his voice was soft, "Did it hurt?"

"It was excruciatingly painful and utterly perfect at the same time, it always is. I became whole, that creature had been locked up inside of me, and the magic released it."

Nobody else noticed how a frown crossed Thor's brow and his hand fell to  _Mjölnir_  again, so Aerla restrained her defensive sneer. Perhaps a father's faults did transpose onto the offspring, after all.

Stark asked a question whilst he continued to work, but Aerla preferred his inattention to the pitying looks from everyone else. "Where'd you go?"

"I couldn't shift back, I didn't know how, and, surprisingly, no one was okay with a wolf running around." It was easier to dance over the suffering but she distractedly rubbed a hand over the first wound she had ever received, and they all saw.

A long-healed slash of an axe; it throbbed dully, more a memory than actual pain, but it still ached.

"I- I went back to the heather fields of frost and fire and starlight because it felt familiar, it felt like I  _belonged_ there. I had been driven out by everything I knew and I waited for someone to return, to know me, but no one ever did."

Guilt was a sheen on Thor's face even though he had absolutely nothing to do with her past. It softened her dislike a tiny amount, until he said, "If I could find your birth parents, I would."

There was genuine sincerity in words that she had waited a lifetime to hear, but even if she hadn't already made a decision, Thor just kept affirming it for her. "Find your home," he said earnestly, " _Heima_."

Aerla flinched, distinctly aware that he had dipped into the old language to convince her of his good intentions. It had the opposite effect, because she did not need his  _help_ , his false empathy _._  Not anymore. "I wanted that once, now all I want is to keep Earth safe."

Steve's smile was small but warm and Aerla could breathe that much easier with every sign that she wasn't about to be driven off again. The times had certainly changed.

Thor, however, was proof that they hadn't. His face was downturned into confusion, the expression of a god who valued ancestry above all else. "But heritage is important."

Aerla felt slighted, and the bitter words slipped out before she could stop them, "Did you tell Loki that, too?"

Crushing remorse flinched across Thor's face as he said quietly, "I would not have children abandoned."

She felt ungrateful, but Thor had come to symbolise the perfect life that she had never had, the life that Loki had almost had, and suddenly Aerla felt more in common with the denounced god of mischief than with anyone else in this room.

"We all find our way home eventually, I've just found something better," she said softly, and deliberately leaned away from Thor, towards the rest of the Avengers.

"Always happy to have you, kid," Stark murmured without looking up from his screen, and Aerla had to withhold the wave of giddy relief that came at another sign of acceptance.

Bruce smiled, but he was still gorging on knowledge that he had never known existed. "You must have returned to society at some point though, surely?"

"I tried when I gained some control," she said and leaned back on the counter, ignoring Thor's intent gaze. "It almost worked, until I shifted in my sleep and they trussed me up for their pyre, saying they would sacrifice me to their gods for a good harvest. The fire reached my chest before I managed to escape."

A collective wince rolled around the horrified room, and that was when Aerla noticed that someone was in the doorway.

"Why didn't you live with the wolves?" Clint asked with his carefully neutral face on, but his presence was enough to lift her flagging spirits.

"I did," she answered simply and smirked morbidly when Bruce blinked in surprise. "They took me in, they literally licked my wounds and got me back on my feet; and  _they_  didn't turn me away when I got back up on human ones."

It was almost hilarious, in a sick and twisted type of way. The wild animals had done for her what the humans could not: looked after her, trained her, kept her  _safe_  until she was old enough to fend for herself.

"You lived with  _beasts_?" Thor asked in amazement, his tone disgusted, and Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation at the tactlessness.

"It was they or  _die_ ," Aerla snapped at Thor, unable to differentiate him from her past when he looked down his nose at her. "Complete control took time, and it turned out I had a lot of it."

"How do you stay, um," Steve trailed off embarrassedly, blushing when Stark snorted at what he knew Cap was asking, "Clothed?"

"It is magic," Thor remarked and once again it infuriated Aerla, as if he had any idea of the power that she wielded, when he wasn't even a mage.

"I have told you once already, Odinson. You know  _not_ of me, do not presume."

Thor matched her glower and Bruce looked between them, distracting her by asking, "Why does he make you so angry?"

"I can't help it, I look at him and-" Aerla glanced bitterly at the frowning god. "And I remember."

"Remember what?"

"Fear," she bit out. "And pain."

When Steve looked a little accusingly at him, Thor fidgeted and complained, "It is not easy for me, either. By rights, I should have killed you."

"What  _rights,_ Odinson?" Aerla spat heatedly, "The rights of a race who left  _Miðgarðr_  to fend for itself for a millennium?"

The rage built, borne of all of those years when she only had herself to argue with, only had the stars to scream at. Aerla would not let the  _Æsir_  try to pull the wool over her or humanity's eyes ever again.

He wasn't Thor anymore; he was what she named him, the son of Odin; the heir to a name that she had cursed for the last thousand years. Aerla kept her seat because Thor's palm had drifted to his weapon once more, but she leaned forward keenly.

"Even if the Tesseract had just  _somehow_  fallen through space to land here," she drawled, and the humans realised that she was onto something, but then they stared at her in shock as she continued, "We both know that the Allfather has been here."

"I know nothing of that," Thor replied adamantly, shaking his head. "Up until my banishment, I was always told that Midgard was out of bounds."

"Yes," she ground out, "After Óðinn toyed with us."

Thor bristled, his jaw setting. "What do you know of my father, Midgardian?"

"Are we resorting to name-calling, now?

"You  _are_ a Midgardian, you have lived here all of your life, have you not?"

"By that logic," she hissed, "Loki is an  _Æsir_  and not a  _jǫtunn_."

Thor reeled at hearing those terms said in her perfect, remembered dialect, and her smile was a little vicious in its triumph. The others merely stared in stunned silence at the rapid back-and-forth between two immortals who were trying to bury instincts to kill the other.

Steve stood between them and held up his palms. "This is not the time to turn on each other."

Thor scowled at her but spoke to Steve, "She speaks of things she doesn't understand!"

Aerla slid off of her counter and snarled, "Do not push me, Þórr, for I  _will_ show you my claws."

In a lurch of movement, Thor drew  _Mjölnir,_ and Aerla growled low in her throat, every thought in her head telling her to  _strike;_ to defend herself, to gain vengeance for every moment that she had howled in terror or abandonment.

"Enough!" Steve yelled, and Aerla instinctively ducked her head at his command and chided herself for doing so. "Thor, walk it off, you aren't yourself. Aerla, with me."

Aerla's lip twitched into a grimace. "What, I  _am_  being myself?"

Stark looked pointedly at her fighting stance and scoffed from the other side of the counter, "Er, yeah?"

Steve shot Stark a look that told him to shut up and ordered, "Tony, get to work on where that robot-thing came from."

Stark merely smirked in response, Bruce tapped his chin in thought, and Aerla finally noticed that Clint had paled before he shook his head and disappeared. The latter reaction brought her out of her rage and made a little whisper of guilt flutter through her chest again, she didn't want to alienate the archer, but she couldn't withhold her reactions to Thor.

They were deep-rooted, learned behaviours after years of suffering, and the blood that flowed in his veins was the cause of it.

Aerla reluctantly followed Steve out of the room and couldn't stop herself from baring her teeth at the wary god as she passed him. Thor's face was closed, but Aerla heard his sigh as she walked down the corridor.

She didn't know what that meant.

 

* * *

 

"I hate this room," she muttered to Steve when he led her to a punching bag. Her ire dissolved when Steve merely stared at her though, something like confusion and concern and  _loss_ in his expression. It made her gush ashamedly, "Steve, I'm sorry-"

"You said you'd been burned once, and I thought you meant figuratively, but you meant the- the sacrifice, didn't you?"

Aerla locked her jaw against the memories but managed to mumble, "Yes."

Horrified sympathy raced across his face, and then he reached out to gently grip her arm.

It was too much.

With the rage gone, Aerla felt hollow and tired, and his affection was too welcome. She bumped her nose into Steve's chest and gave a shuddering sigh of relief when his arms came hesitantly around her shoulders. Sawdust and sweat gripped her tight and Aerla shuddered as she realised just how incredibly important his opinion had been.

It was a tiny comfort, probably one that his soldier nature was unsure of, but the gallant gentleman he was underneath it all couldn't deny her a show of friendship.

Aerla heaved a thankful breath and pulled away, Steve's head tilting downwards to look at her in concern. She felt his gaze linger on the furrow of her forehead and the way her teeth worried her lip.

No wonder the Avengers seemed so tired, Aerla was exhausted, and she wasn't even mortal.

Steve sighed, one of his frame-wracking ones. "We should never have tried to use the Cube. If we had never found it…"

_We_.

He still saw her as human, as one of them. Whether he meant to or not, it eased another area of tightness in her chest, and had her answering with the age that even he didn't possess, with the protective urge that always flared around mortals.

"Power is a heady thing, Cap," she murmured jadedly. "If you don't have it, you want it, and if you have it, you end up wishing you never did."

Steve stared raptly, trying to make her understand something that he thought she didn't already see, "HYDRA used the Cube to tear through us like paper."

"I know." Aerla replied softly, "I was around."

Steve blinked, and she saw when he suddenly remembered what she was, what she had said earlier. Aerla had almost stood on the frontlines as he had, with different forces but ultimately on the same side.

If she had known exactly what HYDRA had wielded, she would have torn Red Skull apart, herself. Instead, Steve had done it, and as she had almost been sacrificed to the fire, he almost had been to the ice.

And Aerla would never be able to fully forgive herself for that, for the  _grief_ in Steve's old, blue eyes.

It wasn't just an enemy to her, it was a war that she had been fighting for years. It wasn't just HYDRA, it was a renewed threat to her planet's safety. It wasn't  _just_ the Cube, it was the Tesseract; abandoned by the gods, just like her.

Alien tech had reared its ugly head and Aerla hadn't been able to  _do_ anything about it. It had been there all along, just waiting for an inconsiderate god to retrieve it, but he hadn't. He had left it on Earth to be manipulated and used for death, because mortals could not understand it, and they shouldn't have to, but SHIELD and others were trying regardless.

Aerla would not let Steve's nightmares repeat themselves, if she could remove every influence of magic on the planet, she would.

If humanity wasn't careful, they would destroy the planet before the magic could even fade. Somehow, however, she didn't think that 'Asgardian greenhouse gases' would go down well with the newspapers.

Steve sighed far too tiredly and it made her immortal's heart ache to make him smile. He strode over to one of the windows and stared at the clouds, so she offered, "I saw you once, just fleetingly."

He shifted his weight awkwardly, unable to comprehend just how old that made her, and yet she was older still. He didn't turn around as he tentatively asked, "Before or after the, er, performances?"

Aerla couldn't stop the rueful smile that tilted her lips, because she could see how much he disliked those memories. He was an inspiration though, for war bonds and for victory, because he was still soldiering on.

"During, I'm afraid," she said, remembering stars-and-stripes, dancing girls, and a fresh-faced Captain America. Steve grimaced and it made her laugh softly. "I'm glad you kept the shield though, it suits you."

She joined him at the window and he looked at her with wry humour warming his smile. "I don't need to tape my speeches on the inside, anymore."

"Instead, you practice them in front of the mirror?" Aerla asked cheekily, trying to take him away from the bomb-studded memories of his time before the ice.

His laugh was embarrassed and adorable. "Only sometimes."

Aerla rested her shoulder against his and felt him relax at the contact. It lightened her heart that he still trusted her, that he took as much comfort from her as she did from him.

Steve was, perhaps, the most difficult to convince, because he was so good-natured. If he had thought that she meant any harm to Earth, he wouldn't accept her, but now he knew that she had been defending it for longer even than he.

With Steve convinced, she just had to deal with the magic-hater.

For now, though, she savoured the rare feeling of contentment and murmured happily, "I won't tell anyone."

"See that you don't," Steve replied with a chuckle, and they watched the clouds fly past for a few minutes.

He broke the comfortable silence first and she saw the military man reappear in front of her. The inborn warmth was still there, but he was the Avengers' Captain America once more, the steadfast leader and the man who knew that she had been avoiding something. "Time to show me how fast you really are."

Aerla groaned, physically and emotionally exhausted, but Steve was relentless, ushering her out of the room and saying that if she could hit him at least once, he would consider letting her off.

Fox-fast, she tapped him on the shoulder and ran for the relative safety of the control room. Aerla had a favour to ask of the grumpiest inventor on the helicarrier, and Stark would make payment a bitch. She felt happier, lighter, with a new purpose that felt  _right_  rather than imposed, and that outshone any doubts that she had.

Aerla wondered at what point this had become her life and, with an incredulous smile thought, when had she started enjoying it so much?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor is surprisingly set in his ways, but that's what a thousand years of seclusion will do to you. Fortunately for everyone, Steve's the alpha and the omega - no one could stay angry at that face, or that hug.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this update and the Caplove, there's more reactions in the next AND a whole new PoV along with a shocking bruise. Please kudos and comment, hugs for you all!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and tricky tongue, all belong to me.


	24. Cupcakes and Cupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aerla contemplated the dichotomy of the assassin. It was as if Romanova was offering her a reprieve as long as she stayed faithful to humanity, but SHIELD wouldn't bat an eyelid if Aerla's body showed up laced with poison.
> 
> It was always nice to know where you stood in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trust comes in some strange forms. Sometimes it's handshakes, sometimes it's specially made arrows, and sometimes it's cupcakes. It's the pink-frosted trust that we all want, preferably with sprinkles.

 

> How blunt are all the arrows of thy quiver in comparison with those of guilt.
> 
> \- Robert Blair

 

She was sitting in the archery range when Clint finally appeared in the doorway with her cupcake in his hand. It was pink, covered in sprinkles, and she had left it right where he would see it. She had fought against the urge to break into his room and leave it there, thinking that a bit too territorial, and had instead placed it in front of his door.

Clint still smelled like  _belladonna,_ and Aerla didn't want to wake up with a poisoned dagger in her throat courtesy of a possessive assassin, after all.

And yet, Aerla liked Clint too much to let him hate her without a fight.

"Did you make this?"

Aerla snorted as he flopped down next to her and she relaxed at his gesture of friendliness. "No, it was Stark's."

"Good." His voice was muffled as he bit into the delicious creation, "I don't want to eat any of your fur."

A grin grew unbidden on her face at his silly disparagement, and at the pink icing now decorating his mouth. He munched in silence for a moment as she enjoyed being near without distrust between them.

It wasn't quite like it had been, but it was a start.

When he spoke, he sounded like someone had just told him that Santa didn't exist, "Is that how you can see so well in the dark?"

Laughing at his affront, she nodded. "Yeah, but you use a compound bow, that's basically cheating."

He actually shrugged as if agreeing with her opinion, but then smirked. "You didn't think you could beat me without your weird eyes."

"Again, compound bow, but I'm still faster than you."

"Yeah?" He raised his eyebrows over his swiftly disappearing gift. "What, 'cause you're some wolf thing?"

"Negative," she replied dryly. "I am a meat-popsicle."

Clint grinned but muttered around the last bite, "See if you ever get a multi-pass for SHIELD, now."

Aerla flapped her hands in his face and made a buzzing noise until he sniggered and batted her away. When he stood, he held a hand out to pull her up and her gratitude was many-layered as she said simply, "Thanks."

Clint was like Stark, not at all tactile; she couldn't get away with giving him a hug like she could with Steve, but he was learning her and tolerated a brief grip on his forearm.

He inclined his head in acknowledgement, that she was also thanking him for not hating her. "I'm not alright with it, but when you look like this," he gestured up-and-down her body, "I can deal with it."

Aerla could accept that. Clint's response was the one she had been least sure of, he detested aliens and magic, and she was essentially both. It had been a fond but foolish idea to give him a gift, knew that he would immediately seek her out, and she wanted it to be in a place that they had enjoyed together.

So she had given Cupcake and cupcake and coaxed him to the archery range.

It would take time, but she might be able to help him with his fear of foreign power, because she would never use her claws against him.

Unless he irritated her, she might then, just gently.

"Rogers is looking for you by the way," he remarked and stretched leisurely.

Aerla groaned and dragged her hand down her face. "Steve just wants to test me, see if I've been hiding any other skills from him."

"Have you?"

She grinned at him, and noticed how he grimaced as his gaze locked onto her teeth. She knocked him on the shoulder and teased mysteriously, "Maybe."

"So what, you're a bit faster, quicker reflexes?" Aerla nodded and he frowned, adding, "Why won't you spar with him then, afraid he'll beat you?"

She threw him an unimpressed look. "That doesn't work on me. Come on, I just gave you a cupcake, lay off me."

He deliberated for a moment and she thought that she had won, but then he said slyly, "Afraid that  _I'll_ beat you?"

"If I didn't think you'd faint," she taunted, and poked him in the chest. "I'd shift right now and shake you like a ragdoll."

He stared at her for a moment. "You're so fuckin' weird."

"I was expecting worse; I can deal with 'weird'."

"Don't mention it, furry," he said in faux-innocence and, with a chuckle, dodged her swipe at his arm. "Come on, you know Rogers will pace until he knows what you can do."

Aerla grumbled under her breath but knew that Clint was right, and it was only good sense to work her skills in with theirs.

She had never been known of possessing much sense, though.

That was confirmed when Clint cajoled and mocked her into a new exercise room, this one full of mats instead of sandbags. Steve glanced up with a surprised smile when he saw her scowling at Clint's heels, but at least it was a better reaction to the other.

Romanova positively  _oozed_ malice, like mist off of a moor. Aerla was very aware that whilst she might have Clint edging into her corner, the rest of SHIELD was still firmly Fury's, and they did  _not_ like her.

The assassin moved, a fluid twist of her arm and then something arced through the air. Aerla watched it for a split second before instinctively leaping to catch it after Clint jerked in alarm.

If she had let it follow its course, it would have missed Clint by a hair and embedded itself somewhere in her chest cavity.

Instead, Aerla caught the dagger by the hilt, as she had planned, and flipped it end-over-end before stalking over to Romanova and handing it to her with a saccharine smile.  _Test me again,_ she dared with her eyes, before Steve said wonderingly, "I think you're going to be fine, Aerla."

Romanova levelled a glance at her that said her life was hanging by a thread, but her words were amicable. "I don't think she's scared of you hurting her, Steve, I think she's scared of  _beating_ you."

Aerla contemplated the dichotomy of the assassin. It was as if Romanova was offering her a reprieve as long as she stayed faithful to humanity, but SHIELD wouldn't bat an eyelid if Aerla's body showed up laced with poison.

It was always nice to know where you stood in the world.

Clint retreated to the far wall with a shake of his head. "Fuckin' insulting, bring your A-game, Aerla."

Aerla stepped back and aimed a dubious look at Steve, hiding the eager anticipation that was already coiling in her stomach. "Is that what you want?"

"Yes, I need to know how fast you can be."

The agent pair lounged against the wall and Aerla knew that she was about to be very thoroughly evaluated. It wouldn't do to have SHIELD think that she could be thrashed. Aerla resisted pawing the ground with her foot and settled with a challenging, "Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you."

Steve lowered into a readying stance and Aerla snapped her arm out quicker than he could react. She patted him on the cheek and then straightened when the room stilled and Clint swore under his breath.

"Language," Aerla teased, in a perfect imitation of Steve, and Clint snorted at her to cover his shock.

Steve touched his cheek and blinked before settling back down. "Again, and actually hit me this time."

"You're a sadist."

"No, I want to test your strength."

Aerla sighed, heavily, but knew that he wouldn't let it go. Inwardly, she reared up and relished in the opportunity to  _fight,_ with things that could take her on.

There had been only one other over the last few decades that had managed it, but now she could actually use her skills again. Yes, Loki and Thor might accidentally-on-purpose kill her for shifting in front of them, and SHIELD would happily hide her body, but Aerla could still use her lupine speed and senses.

It felt good to unwind a little, to  _spar_ with a worthy opponent.

Aerla slammed a fist into Steve's jaw and tried not to crow with absolute delight when the responding pain jarred up her arm. It felt like  _living,_ and it grounded her against the memory of Loki's dizzying power. Steve, of course, barely reacted, but the tiny wince that he did show made her grin happily.

He noticed it. "You're enjoying this too much."

"Of course not, you're still standing."

He tried to frown past his amusement, but it didn't entirely work. "That's not healthy."

"What's not healthy," she replied as she flexed her aching knuckles, "Is how you don't feel anything. Are you secretly steel underneath your skin?"

He raised an eyebrow, as if he had heard that many times before. "Are you fur under yours?"

"Why," she asked sweetly, "Do you wanna see?

"No, what?" Steve stuttered uncertainly when he realised what she was saying. "You don't need to do that."

"I don't mind, I won't even bite your arm off if you touch my fur."

Clint snickered lewdly in the corner and Aerla rolled her eyes as Steve blushed. They both decided to ignore him.

"Doesn't it hurt?"

"It's as easy as breathing."

Steve rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "I suppose it would be useful to see how you fight in it, so we can work some tactics-"

Aerla launched at him and shifted in mid-air, releasing her magic as she threw her phone and earpiece to the floor. Fur exploded as she forced her paws into Steve's shoulders to send him thunking against the floor and grunting at her weight.

"Fucking Hell," Clint muttered, and paled when she threw him a toothy grin.

Steve was hilariously still beneath her, like a plank of wood that was terrified of disturbing the beast above, so she licked his face to startle him into a laugh. It was what made Steve realise that it was still her, because she was playing with him, and he had become used to that from her.

"Okay, this is strange, let me up," he chuckled, but frowned when she shook her head. "I have to fight you off?"

Aerla wiggled her butt, and waited patiently as his palms ran tentatively along her fur. It felt nice, like a hug or a grip on the forearm, but it was mostly nice because it was another avenue of trust that she had only ever allowed once before.

Steve's face was one of wonderment and slowly he remembered what he was meant to be doing. His hands tightened against her rib cage as he confirmed, "No holds barred?"

Aerla bared her teeth at him in answer and he grimaced, and then she was flung across the room.

Clint desperately scrambled to get out of her way as she skidded along the floor and then barrelled back to Steve who was trying to right himself. His shield came up just in time for her to bounce into it, and he held it up against her as her claws scrabbled on the polished metal.

"Hey!" Steve scowled at her over the rim, as if she were a hound at his feet. "Stop scratching it."

Aerla panted a laugh and used his offended distraction to her advantage by wiggling underneath the shiny circle. Surprised to see her there, he took a step back and she wove between his legs until he tripped.

It was easy; they needed more training.

Back on the floor again, Aerla was quite literally top dog as she put her full weight on Steve's torso and ever-so-gently placed her teeth around his neck. He froze and she could feel his pulse along her tongue, like a heady beat that drummed her triumph.

Steve tapped the floor with one hand and she immediately let him go, felt him relax underneath her as she once again proved her loyalty.

So focused was she on the act of dominance- of  _trust_ , she barely noticed how the door had opened. There was a roar of noise and then everything blanked into blinding pain as something hard smashed into her side and cracked a rib.

Air whistled and then the wall slammed into Aerla's shoulder and she howled in agony, black spots dancing in her vision. Apprehension ran its course and she painfully climbed up to defend the humans, distressed that they might be harmed because she hadn't been paying attention.

Had Loki come on board, had HYDRA attacked, had  _Ragnarǫk_  hit Earth instead of  _Ásgarðr_?

Blinking furiously past the spots, Aerla saw Clint had moved to stand in front of her, his feet braced apart and his arm bent over his shoulder, hand brushing his bow as if prepared to draw and shoot. Looking through his legs, she saw Steve and Thor toe-to-toe and yelling at each other.

Thor gestured at her with  _Mjölnir_ in hand, and then she realised that the quickly forming bruise along her chest was definitely hammer-shaped.

Thor had struck her.

 

* * *

 

Clint had no idea what had just happened. One second he had been shitting himself because Aerla was fucking  _scary_ when she was the other thing, he had been prepared to mock Steve for losing to a dog, and then the door opened and alarmed rage had broken out across Thor's face.

Thor had taken one swing with that ridiculous hammer and then Aerla had shot across the room with a wicked sounding crack.

Before he had even thought about it, Clint had placed himself between the two and prepared to stab Thor in the eye with an arrow if he made any moves towards Aerla.

At first, when she had said what she really was, he had thought that he was going to be sick, but she was way too sorry for him to hate her. She was still funny, still rubbed Stark and Fury the wrong way, still shot damn well.

He didn't like that she could wear that creepy wolf skin, but she  _was_  on their side.

And Thor had seemed a little too okay with killing her just because she was a freak of nature, even if it was alien nature.

Movement on the ground had him looking down to see the freak of nature panting heavily against his leg, her eyes locked on Steve who was really going at Thor.

Clint managed to restrain the shudder of terror that shook his chest, had to remind himself that it was still  _her,_ she wasn't like Banner when he turned into the Hulk. And yet, those alien teeth near his calf still scared him far more than the thought of mutated green fists way bigger than his head.

At least the Hulk was just a science experiment gone wrong, not a... a gods-and-wizards thing.

"What are you doing," Steve shouted in Thor's face. "We were sparring!"

Thor drew back in angry confusion. "I thought that she was trying to kill you."

"That's what sparring is!" Steve was yelling now, his cool well and truly lost.

Thor turned aggrieved eyes on Aerla who was definitely trembling, and she flinched when the god tried to take a step forward. Thor looked as if she had slapped him, and then said quietly, "I am truly sorry, Aerla, I did not mean-"

The door opened again and Banner practically fell into the room, immediately running for Aerla and scooping her earpiece up as he murmured to her questioning whimper, "Jarvis called me."

Aerla nodded and tried to stand, but winced and wobbled back onto Clint's foot again. He instinctively reached down to steady her and they both froze at the contact.

Her fur was coarse on top, but underneath the guard hairs it was quite soft, as if she really was just a wolf. The tremors that had wracked her body began to recede as his did, and she looked up at him with what was definitely a grateful look.

This was so fucking weird.

Banner didn't seem at all bothered by the inch-long fangs right next to his face, because he gently held Aerla's furred jaw in his hand to make her face him and said calmly, "I need you to shift back, I can't check you out like this."

Aerla hesitated, and then looked up at him with an expression that seemed apologetic for some reason, but he had no idea why-

She tensed, and then in a burst of light that wasn't quite bright and yet wasn't quite dark, the wolf disappeared and Aerla lay slumped against him. If it wasn't for the fact that it was just her, and she had already sort of apologised, and she didn't flare that damn Cube-shade of blue, he would have kicked her away and fucking run for it.

Even knowing that everything was fine, fear still managed to creep from his chest to his stomach.

Aerla cried out, the sound harsh and distressing, and they all winced. It would be impossible for her not to have broken something, he had watched that impossible hammer sit in the dirt for ages until Thor appeared, and then he had seen Thor smack one of the Chitauri Leviathans in the nose and stop it dead.

How Aerla wasn't just a pile of smashed bones was beyond him.

Thor took another step forward but then the god caught his eye and something made him stop in his tracks. Clint realised that  _he_  was the reason, because Thor had  _hit_ her, and all he could think of was Aerla's sigh of relief when he had eaten that stupid pink cupcake that she must have bargained off of Stark to give to him.

He realised that, at some point, he had fully gripped his bow, and he half-thought that if Aerla wasn't okay, he might challenge Thor.

Or at least shoot him in the back; Clint liked odds that would see him living through the encounter.

He didn't take his eye off of Thor even as Steve stepped forward and, with what sounded like a surprised grunt, bundled Aerla up in his arms. She protested loudly but Steve just shook his head and told Banner to lead on. Thor tentatively followed Steve outside, leaving a respectful distance between them after another careful glance at Clint.

Clint kneeled down to pick up Aerla's forgotten phone and safely pocketed it. He'd return it to her once he withstood the chewing out he was about to get, because he'd just made a statement that he shouldn't have.

Natasha appeared at his side in that silent, invisible way that she did, and stared at the closing door. "You were going to kill Thor."

"I thought about it," he replied honestly, because there was no point in hiding the truth from her.

She already knew everything about him.

"He thinks she's like Bruce."

"She isn't," he answered easily, because she  _wasn't._ Somehow, it was still her, she wasn't like Banner, like the Hulk. He knew that and he was coming to terms with it, but she still scared the shit out of him.

Then again, so did Natasha.

"You don't think she enjoyed having Steve's life in her jaws?"

He looked at the gorgeous redhead askance and murmured, "Wouldn't you?"

Natasha's smile was dangerous and sent heat straight to his gut, and he was once again confronted with the knowledge that he would do damn near anything for her. She prowled about the helicarrier with death in her eyes and blood in her wake, and he found her so fucking hot.

It was a miracle that no one had figured it out yet, Hell knew he couldn't stop from eating her up with his eyes whenever she strut by or killed a man with a flick of her wrist. They were careful, they were secret agents after all, but he was addicted to her delicious brand of poison.

He wondered idly whether she'd ever spar with Aerla, and immediately decided that he wanted front-row seats.

Possibly popcorn, too.

And a camera.

"I would've had to kill you if you hurt Thor."

Clint didn't miss what she wasn't saying, that Thor was more important than Aerla, but he was SHIELD and so all he could say with a low note of eager challenge was, "You could try."

Natasha drew a dagger from somewhere and played with the tip as she said huskily, "Let's see."

Damn near anything.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, I shipped it. Look at me, breaking all of the boundaries: Pepperony, Clintasha, what mad idea will I come up with next?! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, please write me a comment if you did, especially if you thought it was green, green, green!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and archer adoration, all belong to me.


	25. Nipping and Nepenthe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An alpha's job isn't just to lead the pack, winning a fight and claiming superiority isn't a bragging right. The strongest must fight and defend, they have to protect those weaker than them; for without a pack, they are simply alone.

 

> "I can just repeat what [Hannibal] told me-he could see what [Clarice] was  _becoming_ , she was charming the way a cub is charming, a small cub that will grow up to be-like one of the big cats. One you can't play with later. She had the cublike earnestness, he said. She had all the weapons, in miniature and growing, and all she knew so far was how to wrestle with other cubs. That amused him."
> 
> \- Thomas Harris,  _'Hannibal'_

 

Aerla groaned when Steve placed her down in the control room, and wondered whether he had meant to put her on  _her_ counter. "I am not an invalid, Cap."

Stark didn't even look up as he said mockingly, "Someone put a muzzle on that."

She opened her mouth to swear at him but then Bruce's fingers prodded her rib and she yelped instead. Bruce immediately ducked to root around in the cupboards, muttering, "There's medical tape in here, somewhere."

Aerla waved him away and grit out, "Just check that it's in the right place, it will fuse in a bit."

He regarded her for a moment, as if checking to see whether she was lying and being a stubborn patient, and then Steve joined in by worriedly asking, "Is she concussed? Thor hit her pretty hard."

"I am  _not_ concussed," she replied adamantly, and wondered how the Hell she was to explain her regeneration to Steve.

Stark had been pretending not to listen, but he must have been because he remarked matter-of-factly, "She got shot earlier."

"Shut up, Glow," she ground out, not wanting to put that concerned look back in Steve's eyes, but sighed and dutifully brandished her bloodied shirt when he frowned in an unspoken command to explain. When Aerla showed him mark-less skin, he raised his eyebrows. "How else do you think I can clock you on the jaw without breaking my hand?"

"I thought it was a magic thing," he mumbled a little sheepishly, as if feeling guilty for making her punch him.

"It  _is_ a 'magic thing'," she replied amusedly. "I heal faster than the average human."

"Prevention, not cure, kid," Stark called from his counter.

"Did I not just tell you to shut up?"

Steve stood in Aerla's eye-line so she that she had to focus on him instead as he asked, "Does it hurt?"

"Of course it hurts," she said with a wince when Bruce put light pressure on her ribs. Steve looked anxiously down at her so she patted him on the arm. "Don't fret, Cap, I've dealt with worse, and I had fun."

Aerla felt the bone burn as it came into contact with the broken part, and had to push the heel of her palm against the pain to check that it was in the right place. It wasn't, Bruce had been too gentle with her. She hissed and forced it over, felt the snap as the tiny fusings moved.

Bruce winced in apology and handed her earpiece over, shaking his head with a smile when she breathed in relief at the healing rib and having Jarvis in her ear once more. The AI quietly reprimanded her and she rubbed a fond finger along the plastic. Content again, she murmured, " _Mjölnir_  packs a punch, then."

Stark snorted and rubbed a shoulder. "It hurt through my suit."

"The other guy couldn't lift it," Bruce said with a soft laugh of disbelief.

Steve didn't join in, instead regarding her with a troubled cast to his brow. "Thor would never have hurt you, if you hadn't been…"

_Magic, a wolf,_ _öfugr_ _, take your pick_ , she thought bitterly as her fingers fell from her ear. Aerla smacked her head on the counter and said scornfully, "That makes it okay?"

"No, of course not, but he'll be here any minute to apologise."

"And you think I should forgive him," she didn't phrase it as a question, but Steve inclined his head anyway.

"We're a team, Aerla," he said quietly, and Aerla didn't want to ask who else he was including in that. It was a gentle reminder, and he was right; besides, she could be the better person, the better species.

But she would not let the god think that he had any  _right_ to strike her, no matter the heritage.

Thor walked in and she automatically tensed, and, to her quiet delight, so did everyone else, including Thor when he realised how wary the looks thrown his way were.

"Aerla, I am truly sorry-"

"It's fine," she interrupted tightly and sighed in compliance at Steve's tiny encouraging smile. "I know you thought I was.. hurting him."

Thor relaxed, nodding in relief, and it eased the stances of the two men at Aerla's side. Stark, however, glanced over when she slowly sat up. Aerla disliked feeling vulnerable and fixed her eye on Thor, noticing the way the god tracked her every movement.

It seemed that neither of them were yet entirely comfortable around the other.

"But know this, Odinson," she murmured, a threat lacing her words as she ignored the inhaled breaths from around her. "I have wandered here for a millennium, if there was any one being that wouldn't let harm befall humanity, it is I."

Thor meditated on her words and then exhaled resignedly. "I understand, but you are not the only one who protects Midgard."

"I'm the only one who will do it from Earth's surface. Whatever laces my veins, I am first and foremost of  _Miðgarðr_."

Thor frowned and set his jaw. "That is what troubles me, the.. creature.. that lives within you, it is not safe."

Aerla felt Bruce stiffen against her shoulder and she leaned into him, lending him the same soothing strength that he usually gave her. "I am in perfect control, and even were I not, we all only want to keep Earth safe."

Steve's surprised expression at her low and forceful words settled into a smile. He still seemed to wrestle with her age and animosity towards Thor, but he couldn't deny her desire to stand alongside them.

Thor stepped forward, concern writ on his features, and that depth in his blue eyes was all that kept her from lashing out instinctively. The concern, and the way Stark shifted to keep Thor in his eye-line.

"It was wrong of me to strike you, but Loki will not be able to show such restraint, such forgiveness."

Bruce frowned, his fingers dropping from her almost-healed rib. "Forgiveness because of what she was born as?"

"And I thought America could be backwards," Stark muttered under his breath.

Aerla rolled her shoulders wearily and looked at her hands. "Loki would kill me, I know," she said bitterly, but then her thoughts turned to emerald eyes that had lit with curiosity, and she had to wonder…

_Would he?_

Bruce interrupted that pitiful, doubting question by saying, "You can play it off as mutation, can't you?"

Aerla shook her head at the same time as Thor. For once, the god let her explain – perhaps he was learning. "Loki would know, it's a magic thing."

It thrilled a slumbering, little part of her that she could track a god that didn't want to be seen.

Thor's expression suddenly changed to anxious. "Did you speak to my brother?"

Aerla stilled, thanking the stars that psychic beings didn't exist, because she didn't think that it would go over well if anyone knew how addictive Loki's power had felt. "I saw him, we didn't speak of much."

Thor's expression turned desperate, and it confused her. "Did he look well?"

"Er."  _Very,_ she thought grudgingly. "Yeah, no injuries that I noticed."

Stark sneered, "Unfortunately."

Aerla laughed, but it faded away when Thor appeared strangely hurt, as if they had said something to upset him. It occurred to her that he looked worried, about Loki; was this the fabled sympathy of Thor?

She tried not to scoff at it.

Not noticing her wrinkle of distaste, Thor sighed and began to pace, getting frustrated when the room was too cluttered for him to get anywhere. "I do not think he  _escaped_ from Asgard."

Bruce frowned and weighed his head to the side. "You know you're biased."

Thor appealed to him, "No, not because of that, it is the evidence that compels me."

The three mortals remained disbelieving, but Aerla was interested despite knowing that she should not be. Loki was an escape artist, he was Houdini with the real magic to boot, and she was hungry for more information about him.

She had to know about him, to defeat him, after all.

"His cell was in complete disarray."

Stark stirred from his bored slump on his counter. "So he threw a tantrum before he left, and?"

Thor shook his head. "Loki never shows extreme emotion, he would consider such a display to be weak."

"That doesn't mean he didn't escape, he has the skills to, right?"

"Even I do not know the extents of my brother's magic, not anymore."

Aerla recalled the pure power that pulsed from the green-eyed god and knew that Thor didn't know the half of it. Odin's heir was bereft of a sorcerer's skill and so he would not be able to know how strong Loki was, it was why he had not known that she had magic, and yet Loki had known immediately.

Loki hadn't been the one that threatened to kill her for it, though.

Instead, she had indulged in his. Even now she found herself craving the cool influence, as if it were one of the drugs written about in times of old, capable of banishing grief and trouble.

"Didn't he have watchers, guards?" Aerla asked intently, trying to rid herself of foolishly ironic thoughts, for Loki only wrought trouble, he didn't banish it.

"He made his guards uneasy and there were only so many watchers my father had at his disposal."

Aerla scoffed, "Uneasy? Hell, he's the  _Æsir_  Hannibal Lecter, the clever ones are the ones you have to watch."

The two scientists laughed at her reference, but Thor and Steve only blinked in confusion, so she continued dryly, "What had the Allfather concerned enough on  _Ásgarðr_ that he could not keep an eye on his most dangerous prisoner?"

Thor blinked but then settled at her familiar words, at the dialect she fell into to talk to him. He might still be amazed at her knowledge, but it was clear that Odin's heir felt like the odd-one-out on Earth.

It made a pleasant change.

"There has been unrest amongst the Nine Realms, word of a shadow that is moving through the stars."

Aerla hid her fear of a creature that had even  _Ásgarðr_  concerned, and tried to get Thor back on topic. "What wanders  _Yggdrassill's_  limbs makes no matter when Loki lurks upon Earth."

"What would you have me do? I search for him, but he is too adept at hiding from me."

Aerla leaned back nonchalantly, pleased when her ribs did nothing more than twinge. "You are a fool, Odinson, he will come to us, there is no need to seek him out."

Bruce had been following their words with interest, but Stark had been busying himself with his screen before finally speaking up. "You could though, couldn't you?"

Thor frowned, as if he had forgotten the mortals were there, and then shook his head. "No, I could not-"

Aerla interrupted with a sigh, "He's talking about me."

The amazed look on Thor's face confirmed everything she had guessed about the god: he knew nothing about magic, and it made her pity  _Ásgarðr_. How many mages resided in that realm where their future king knew nothing about them?

But then, who had Loki learned from?

Aerla chased the thoughts away; she had to stop thinking about the world she had almost run to. It was surprisingly difficult after a millennium of it dominating her thoughts. "I can sense him, sometimes."

Bruce's eyebrows raised and Thor asked eagerly, "Then why do you wait? Return with me to the ground and we can look for him."

Aerla recalled the shrewd gaze that had evaluated her so coldly and restrained a shiver. "I don't think even I could find him if he didn't want to be found."

Stark frowned and leaned his chin against his hand to ask Thor, "Wait, when did you say Loki disappeared?"

"Two nights ago."

Stark raised an eyebrow at her and Aerla made the connection to her nightmare, how she had woken up with a scream in her throat. She shook her head lightly and murmured, "But it didn't feel like him at all."

The rest of them looked over in surprise, Bruce and Steve with shock and Thor in worry, so Aerla haltingly explained, "Something woke me up a few nights ago, if what Thor says is correct, it would correspond with when Loki disappeared."

"The ominous something," Stark commented dryly. "Was that it?"

"I don't think so. It was as if- it just felt like-… Fear. Unbridled, sickening fear."

"And what does Loki feel like?" Bruce asked curiously, and it took every single ounce of Aerla's willpower to not shudder in delight at the memory, at the thought of waves of boundless energy curling against her skin.

"Magic," she supplied in such forced neutrality that the three men looked at her strangely, but thankfully Thor was an attention-grabbing oaf. When he moved you watched him, if only to be careful that he didn't bump you into the wall.

Aerla took a measured breath without them watching her, and asked, "Is it too much to hope that it's mere coincidence HYDRA attack just as Loki shows up?"

"Coincidences are life's way of laughing at you, kid, get used to it."

Aerla sent Stark a scathing glare that did nothing to dissuade him. As if she hadn't experienced the worst of what life had to offer, already.  _Arrogant man._

"He didn't work with them before," Steve said, mulling over the implications. "What are the chances they just happened to bump into each other?"

"Loki has always had a way of converting others to his cause," Thor remarked morosely. "It is entirely possible he has joined forces with this creature."

Aerla rolled her eyes when everyone hesitated.  _Ignorant god._  "It's the name of the group, there's not an actual hydra running around on Earth."

"But how did he know where to go?" Bruce continued as if Thor's ignorance hadn't happened, heading for his counter and tapping there. "They're not exactly easy to find if you don't know what you're looking for."

"It's Loki," Stark grumbled. "He's been plotting since he left, he knows exactly what he's doing by now."

"And he can teleport," Aerla added with a glower. "It's how he keeps escaping."

Steve ran a hand through his hair in exhaustion. "Great."

Bruce had been quietly contemplative for a moment, watching something on his screen. He didn't look away as he asked, "Aerla, what made you shift and run to Tony?"

Stark scowled. "Harsh, Bruce, I almost died."

"You're welcome for that, by the way," Aerla interjected with a smirk at Stark's sneer.

Bruce's finger pointed at something. "Here, Steve runs, and only then, do you. What prompted you?"

Aerla cast her mind back and murmured a request to Jarvis, who showed her what Bruce was looking at, a video file. "I don't remember," she said quietly, and paused the playback a split second before she shifted.

Her nostrils flared.

Aerla inhaled sharply and then surged towards Stark, who frowned and backed away. "You look like you're about to touch me, I'm not okay with that-"

"Hush," she muttered and hovered with her nose a few inches away from his neck. He held himself uncomfortably still as she sniffed, trying to separate a very faint scent that loitered on top of his.

_Starlight and flowers._

"There was another mage."

"Impossible," Thor replied, and merely blinked when Aerla bestowed him with a withering glance. "No other Asgardians would be on Midgard."

"Maybe they aren't Asgardians?" Steve hedged, but Aerla shook her head.

"What made me shift; it was a scent in the air, magic and something floral."

"You can  _smell_ magic?" Bruce asked incredulously,

Aerla hummed an agreement, trying to work something out but a little distracted when she noticed the almost-hidden curiosity on Stark's face. "Sweat and sawdust," she answered his unspoken question and tapped Steve on the arm, who looked at her in confusion when Stark snorted in amusement.

"I don't think it was Loki that attacked us."

The looks she received were damning.

"You can't know that, Aerla," Steve said quietly.

"I could," she replied matter-of-factly, and focused very hard on not letting anticipation thrill openly in her expression. "I just need to get close to him."

"No," Steve denied her, but Aerla had already started thinking about it. She just needed a few minutes alone with Loki, to see what he wanted, what he could  _do._

Whether she needed to take matters into her own hands and force the tempting god from her planet.

Stark and Bruce shared a flash of a look, and it made Aerla settle her shoulders and pretend that she wasn't planning to hunt frost across Manhattan. If Stark had been obliterating the alien birds without help, why shouldn't she use her specific skill set to hunt the new big bad?

The urge whispered along her skin, like a memory of Loki's power, and it made her wolf tremble in excitement.

Was this madness, this strange desire to play with iced fire and see how intensely it burned?

If it was, it was surely tempered with sanity, for there was method in it. If there were two mages on Earth, then they were in for a far harder time than they had thought, and Loki was bad enough.

What insane person would ally with Loki, anyway? He had, as Bruce so delightfully put it, a brain like a bag full of cats. Aerla didn't think him crazy – he was too clever for that and he definitely didn't have the odd tang of insanity – but he was certainly unpredictable.

Aerla nibbled the inside of her cheek and locked onto Clint who strode into the control room. "Cupcake, I have a favour to ask you."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "I ain't sparring with you."

"Not yet," she said with a grin, and slipped off of her counter to usher him back outside, ignoring the myriad of concerned looks thrown her way. "Have you collected the robot bits yet?"

"Me and Natasha are going in the morning."

Aerla grinned at him sidelong as they walked down the hallway and crooned, "Came to check on me?"

Clint rolled his eyes but she saw a cheek muscle twitch, and then he reached into his pocket to hand over her phone. It all eased her heart, because she had been worried that her shifting would edge him over into dislike. She had felt the fine tremors that shook his frame through her fur, but now that she was human again, he could deal with her as he usually did.

She took advantage of that and asked, "Can I come with you to the floor?"

"Did Thor hit your head?"

"You're funny. No, I want to find out as much as possible before you trample everything."

"You know, flattery works better."

"I think you're very pretty."

Clint snorted and jerked his head outside. "We're leaving at dawn."

 

* * *

 

Loki lounged on the sky ship's rim and tapped his fingers against his lips. Below him, Midgard lay hidden by drifting clouds, but Loki knew where every part of his plan was coming together.

It was going well, which was why the new mortal was proving to be so interesting, for Loki both loved and loathed riddles.

He lifted his hand to one of the pockets of lingering power and wondered what the little mortal possessed. It nipped with tiny teeth, and when he considered awe-struck – and yet surprisingly feral – blue eyes, he knew that she could wield those teeth if she so wished.

So why didn't she?

He had prodded her, poked her, but aside from her strange ability to sense him and the foolish way she tried to stand up to him, she had shown no obvious strength.

Perhaps she could not control it – that wouldn't be that unexpected; she was only mortal, after all.

What  _had_ been unexpected was who had followed him to Midgard – or, should he say, followed  _Thor_ to Midgard. For that seductive sorceress had been in love with Thor since the moment she had laid those manipulative eyes on him.

Lust for supremacy through base instincts was such a disgusting thing, and Amora was controlled by it.

Still, it had served Loki well; he had only had to point Amora in the direction of a particular mortal villain with strange inventions and she had gone willingly. It would only aid his cause if she were to interfere with the Midgardians, as long as she remained on his leash. Loki hadn't thought that she would get to work quite so quickly, but those were Amora's charms in action.

A pity that she was so inherently vile or she might be more than just an attractive shell of a female. Not that she hadn't tried her little seduction technique on him, but even with her delicate hand on his chest, he had only sneered derisively until she turned her face from him and disappeared.

Of course, her power was paltry, too, which was so incredibly boring to Loki. Amora's obsession with Thor had brought her to Midgard, but it had exhausted her and made her so very malleable to his plans.

Evidently, she had not done as well as he had hoped, however, because the sky ship was calm, and he had just seen Barton skulking around with agent Romanova by his side. Loki's ire had risen at the sight of them; one had once been completely under his control, but the other had manipulated him through his own lack of foresight.

Midgardian females, it seemed, were not without their talents.

Loki glanced idly over his shoulder when a pair of gun-wielding mortals strolled past, a pitiful attempt at guarding as they didn't even know that he was there.

"Fury said that Loki might show up," one said to the other, and Loki returned his gaze to the skies, unconcerned.

"What, all the way up here?"

"Don't be stupid. The new archer chick has a way of knowing, he wouldn't dare."

Loki exhaled in soft amusement and assumed their slightly derogatory terms referred to the little mortal. So, she had told them about her abilities then. Surprising, he hadn't thought that the Midgardians would accept it.

Perhaps they didn't know that her skills sprang from magic. It certainly entertained Loki to no end to know that Thor had allied with a mage and did not even know it; one considerably less potent than Loki, of course, but a mage all the same.

Loki could not deny the way his decades-long ennui had finally started to abate when he had felt that strange power of hers snarling at his. He had considered killing her immediately as she clearly had no control to speak of, but the very idea of a mortal with magic at Thor's side was positively hilarious.

Besides, she had knelt so very prettily for him.

As if summoned, she appeared, her laugh tinkling through the quick air and her teeth flashing at Stark. Loki prepared to leave, but something held him back. An idle curiosity, to see whether or not she would say anything about his presence as the 'guards' had said that she would.

The mortals would surely go into uproar if they knew just how close he had come to their base.

Loki knew that she couldn't see him through his invisibility, he knew that, but he summoned his staff and leaned against it in a show of nonchalance anyway.

He saw the moment that she sensed him; a stillness came over her as if she were a predator that had scented blood on the wind. But this predator was like a mewling cub in comparison to him, magic or no, and so he let her taste of his power to remind her.

The stillness smoothed out and he felt his lip twitch into a startled smirk when her breathing became stuttered.

The little mortal  _liked_  it?

How incredibly fascinating.

Stark was eyeing her oddly, noticing the way her glimmer had died to be replaced with a mixture of fear and focus.

That was the correct response to his appearance, certainly because he had no idea of why he had come all of this way just to ponder his plans, so she could have even less of a clue.

Her blue eyes locked with his and, for a moment, he thought that she had seen him. The feral power in her gaze nipped at his skin, but then she roved over his position and he released the breath he hadn't realised he had been holding.

With a burst of magic that could have been read as a farewell, he teleported back to Midgard's floor, and allowed himself a smile when he thought of how damningly silent she had been.

Perhaps she could be used, after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve is such an omega, balancing everyone out like that; but more importantly, sneaky Loki! Oh, so sneaky, and another mage on the scene? The plot thickens! Please comment if you're enjoying it, want to know more, or simply want to poke me into updating sooner! I have lots of thanks and adoration for everyone that does!
> 
> All characters belong to Marvel, except for Aerla; she, her weapons, abilities, and ice-cube craving, all belong to me.


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